Heavy smoke rises from a wildfire in Irvine, California, in September 2024
Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images
An alarming trend of wildfires in the western US lofting smoke higher in the atmosphere is set to worsen. As fires grow larger with climate change, they are more likely to produce towering storm clouds that can send smoke all the way to the stratosphere.
“These really large wildfire-plume rise heights are the ones that are burning the most area and probably producing the most smoke,” says Derek Mallia at the University of Utah, who presented the research at the American Geophysical…
