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Jaffe Group

US particulate matter air quality improves except in wildfire-prone areas—See our new group paper!

A new paper authored by Crystal McClure and Dan Jaffe describes the increasing  particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution over the last few decades in the Northwest. This research, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed PM2.5 data from rural monitoring (IMPROVE) sites across the contiguous US for 1988–2016. They found a decreasing trend  in PM2.5, and cleaner air, around the country except for in the Northwest, where there is a positive trend in PM2.5. This positive trend is associated with total carbon, a marker for wildfires.

The figure below shows trends in PM2.5 for 1988–2016 for the 98th quantile, that is, the seven highest days. In most of the Northwest (red and orange areas), these days are getting worse, while most of the country has improving air quality trends (purple, blue, and green areas).

Figure 1 in PNAS paper US particulate matter air quality improves except in wildfire-prone areas
The 98th Quantile Regression of PM2.5 trends. Observed PM trends for 1988–2016 (calculated using QR methods) from IMPROVE sites are shown by black dots with corresponding values in µg·m−3·y−1. Krige-interpolated values (calculated from observed data) are shown by the color ramp. Solid black lines with arrows (indicating direction) show the boundary where the Krige-interpolated PM2.5 trends within have a 90% probability of being positive or negative. Of the 157 sites, 92 show statistical significance (8 positive/84 negative).

Read the abstract on the PNAS website

This new research has been garnering a lot of press since its publication: