Reply #85: we might have to dig out some of those old nuclear-winter models ... [View All]

... from the early 1980s. (Which did provide a major kick to global-scale climate modelling, resulting in a number of advances, according to some climatologists I've talked to.)

There was also the flurry of studies after the first Gulf War, looking at the impacts of the smoke. (Forest fires seem to have a different particle size and composition, if I'm remembering correctly from Paul Crutzen's work, but the pollutants from those burning oil wells did travel for hundreds, even thousands of miles. I don't think they messed up the monsoon patterns as much as had been originally forecast, but still.)

I remember the smoke event you mentioned -- and also some earlier ones (I was working in the central Arctic in 1989, and the smoke that summer from what seemed like half of Manitoba catching fire the same week drifted way past the treeline).

Smoke (and also the "black carbon" issue) are pretty complex, as you've noted. I like to use Donald Rumsfeld's quote when teaching: there are the "known knowns" (as in, we know about what trace gases can do); then the "known unknowns" (things which we realize are significant, but we still don't know exactly how they work, so we need to do more research -- smoke, clouds, and all manner of feedbacks); and the "unknown unknowns". The last category are things which might show up out of nowhere, and which we had no clue about. For sure, an "interesting ride"! (The weird "global warming twilight" observed in the Canadian Arctic may be one of these.)

p.s. apparently some places in BC still haven't recovered from the fires in Kelowna and other locations a couple of years ago ... and those were relatively local. Sawmill not yet rebuilt, and hundreds of folks are still out of a job. If that was one high-fire year, I don't want to see what a succession of high-fire years across most of the boreal forest could do!