What have we learned from Minnesota's summer of smoke? A meteorologist weighs in

[MUSIC PLAYING] INTERVIEWER: There's another air quality alert that parts of the region are dealing with today. Heavy ground level smoke from Canadian wildfires is drifting across northern Minnesota. The air quality alert includes cities like Brainerd, Alexandria, Hinckley, Ortonville, Moorhead, International Falls, Two Harbors, Hibbing, Ely, Duluth, Roseau, and Chisago, Isanti, Mille Lacs, Kanabec, and Morrison counties. The alert lasts until tomorrow afternoon.

Today is the 41st day with bad air quality in Minnesota. Most of the alerts have been because of wildfires raging across Canada, and unfortunately we are currently in peak wildfire season. Joining us now is David Brown. He's an air quality meteorologist with the state PCA. David, welcome.

DAVID BROWN: Hello. Thank you for having me.

INTERVIEWER: How busy has your office been this summer with air sampling and issuing air quality alerts?

DAVID BROWN: It's been extremely busy since about mid-May. I feel like that's all we've been doing is working with alerts and doing all that work related to getting that health impact messaging out.

INTERVIEWER: How big of a surprise is this for your team?

DAVID BROWN: The biggest surprise for us was how early it started. We expected to have a busy wildfire season this year. The outlooks that were put out by the Canadian officials were showing some pretty significant fire weather danger throughout the summer up there, and so we were expecting it. What really caught us off guard was just how early it started and how persistent it's been all summer.

INTERVIEWER: What are you learning? What are the lessons you're taking away from this record-breaking year for air quality alerts?

DAVID BROWN: We're learning just how challenging it can be to try and predict the exact ground level smoke concentrations ahead of time. We have a lot of weather models and smoke models that we use, but a lot of times, they just don't handle the smoke real well. There's a lot of things in the meteorology that goes on, and the smoke a lot of times is not just at the ground but it's up aloft. And so trying to estimate how much of that will be brought down to the ground, how much that will mix at the end disperse at the surface, and things like that those are all-- have been pretty challenging to try and pin down what the AQI is going to be on a particular day.

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned messaging. Of course, we-- smoke is a little bit different from the invisible pollutants, say, ozone that we sometimes experience around here. How much of the job is about messaging and telling people how to navigate air quality?

DAVID BROWN: That's a big part of our job. We rely on health guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Minnesota Department of Health, and that's a big part of our alerts is getting the right messaging out for the severity of the event.

INTERVIEWER: Because we're getting closer to the beginning of the school year, this summer, we saw a number of youth sports. Summer camps have to adapt because of the air quality. What's the messaging that you have to take into account for, say, schools or camps making sure kids are healthy?

DAVID BROWN: Yeah, so children are one of the sensitive populations. So they are particularly sensitive to air pollution. Children tend to breathe more air per pound of body weight, and so a certain pollution level will generally impact them more than a healthy adult. And so that's one of the main things we've had to look out for is what are the impacts going to be for those sensitive groups. And so once we get to an AQI of red or higher, that's when the health guidance starts to talk about modifying those outdoor activities for kids like youth sports and things like that.

INTERVIEWER: Do you know is there a training for coaches or administrators on how to spot potential issues with kids, say, asthma? I don't know if your agency is doing that or MDH.

DAVID BROWN: MDH has a program where they are working with sports organizations and coaches to train them on looking out for signs and symptoms of asthma attacks in children.

INTERVIEWER: And, of course, MDH, Minnesota Department of Health. I'm wondering because you work with the PCA and there are policies that come from your agency, folks who work outside, of course, might not have the choice to avoid bad air quality. Any talk within the agency is there should be a policy to protect those folks, or do you have maybe special alerts for them?

DAVID BROWN: No, not at this time. Our regulatory work deals with sources that emit pollutants inside of the state, and unfortunately with the smoke originating from fires up in Canada, there's not much that we can do to regulate the emissions or to-- what we try and do is try and get out the messaging to encourage people to lessen their contribution to it.

INTERVIEWER: So looking forward, I mean obviously this is a bad year for wildfires, but as we deal with climate change here across the world, how do you think your job will be maybe even more intense, who knows, next year into the coming years?

DAVID BROWN: I think that the outlook for summers moving forward is that there's going to be an increased chance for having wildfire smoke events, and I don't know if every summer is going to be like this because a lot of it is driven by just the climate-- the seasonal climate patterns that set up that particular winter before in that summer. However, certainly is an increased chance that we could have one every summer. But like I said, it's hard to say if this is an anomaly or if every year is going to be like this.

INTERVIEWER: Say, before you go, of course, we have this air quality alert for really it looks like most of northern Minnesota that extends down to the Mille Lacs area. What would you like to say about that for folks in those areas today?

DAVID BROWN: Sure. So we saw some pretty heavy smoke over central North Dakota yesterday, and the weather models showed that drifting east into the state of Minnesota. Fortunately, this morning we're seeing that the smoke has decreased at the surface quite a bit. So we have levels that are pretty close to the orange category but aren't quite there across northwest Minnesota. However, there's still looks to be plenty of smoke aloft, and so as the day goes on and we start to heat up, we might see smoke levels increase at the ground across northern Minnesota a little bit today.

But right now we're expecting air quality to be in the orange or unhealthy for sensitive groups category or very close to it for northern Minnesota. And that smoke is going to move from west to east today, so it's going to impact northwest Minnesota mostly in the morning and around midday, and in the afternoon, that's-- and evening, that's going to move over into northeastern Minnesota. And then into the overnight and tomorrow morning, we're going to see winds become northerly, and it's going to push some of that smoke south. And so places like in central Minnesota may see a little bit of smoke tomorrow morning, but there is a lot of cleaner air just north of the border right now that's also going to be brought down. And so by tomorrow, we're expecting the smoke to clear out across most of the state.

INTERVIEWER: Good news. David Brown, thank you for your time.

DAVID BROWN: Oh, thank you for having me.

INTERVIEWER: David is an air quality meteorologist with the State Pollution Control Agency that later in the program, by the way, we're going to talk with a Minnesotan who's been trying to help contain those Canadian wildfires that are causing much of this summer's bad air quality. That's coming up in about 20 minutes.