On August 16, 2020, more than 10,000 lightning strikes pummeled the Bay Area, sparking wildfires across the region. Twelve days later, two of the three largest fires ever recorded in California history are still burning. Aclima scientists analyzed both regulatory and Aclima data to identify patterns in the impacts of these lightning complex fires on air quality.
Early Tuesday morning in San Francisco, a massive five-alarm fire erupted in a building supply company according to the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD). Smoke from the fire rose in a plume high above ground level and was blown northeastward by the winds aloft. Aclima’s network of mobile and stationary air quality sensors picked up the local spikes in fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅) in the hours after the fire began. We continued to see elevated PM₂.₅ levels — particularly in the East Bay — until the valiant and commendable people of the SFFD all but extinguished it midday. However, firefighters remain on the scene as the debris continues to burn.
With the shelter-in-place order in the San Francisco Bay Area extending until at least May 1, millions of people continue to stay home to slow the spread of COVID-19. Just two weeks into what is now expected to last at least six weeks, there are indications that social distancing is indeed flattening the curve and slowing an influx of patients that might otherwise have overwhelmed Bay Area hospitals.
With millions of people sheltering in place across the Bay Area, the daily ebb and flow of urban life has come to a sudden halt. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended many patterns and placed tremendous strain on medical, economic, political, and social systems. The corresponding drop in regional traffic, along with reduced industrial and commercial activity, has also led to a significant decline in air-polluting emissions. While images of empty freeways paint a surreal picture, they also give us an unprecedented glimpse into what happens to the air we breathe when we drastically and suddenly cut emissions.
Aclima measures air quality where people live, work, and spend time with friends and family. Our approach to air quality mapping provides visibility into people’s lived experience of pollution. This new picture of air quality illuminates how pollution impacts people’s health and lives in our communities.
At the Richmond-San Pablo AB 617 steering committee yesterday, we released an interactive report of hyperlocal, average air pollution in Richmond-San Pablo in the SF Bay Area, from August 1 through October 31, 2019, at insights.aclima.io/richmond-san-pablo.
Today, as we send the first of our mapping fleet into Santa Clara County, we reach a new milestone in our work mapping air pollutants and greenhouse gases block-by-block throughout the Bay Area to protect human health and the environment.
