The record-breaking 2017 wildfire season in British Columbia, Canada, began on July 6. The season was characterized by the largest total area burned in the province’s recorded history up to that point, with 12161 km2 consumed by fire. This record has since been surpassed, but the 2017 season remains notable for having the largest number of evacuees, at 65000 people.
On August 12, 2017, the wildfire activity and favorable weather conditions triggered the formation of five major thunderstorms in western Canada (Peterson et al., 2018). These thunderstorms developed into well-organized pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clusters (Fromm et al., 2010; Peterson et al., 2017), which are known to lift enormous amounts of smoke into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) (Khaykin et al., 2018; Peterson et al., 2018; Ansmann et al., 2018; Hu et al., 2019; Baars et al., 2019). The particles, which were pure soot (Petzold et al., 2013), maintained a nonspherical shape even after months of travel (Haarig et al., 2018).
This record-breaking Canadian wildfire smoke event was observed over European lidar stations of the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET) during August 2017 (Ansmann et al., 2018, Baars et al., 2019). Smoke from the fires was detected at heights from the free troposphere to the lower stratosphere. The arrival of these dense smoke layers over Europe was first reported by Khaykin et al. (2018).
Sources for the text: Haarig et al., 2018, Baars et al., 2019.
Data source: Baars et al., 2019. (https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/19/15183/2019/)
For this event, lidar data from the Aerosol, Clouds and Trace Gases Research Infrastructure (ACTRIS) and European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET) database were used, together with Level 3 stratospheric aerosol data from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) mission, specifically the stratospheric Aerosol Profile (APro) product. Additionally, profiles of carbon monoxide (CO) and its contributors were obtained from the In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System (IAGOS), all corresponding to the time period between 15 August 2017 and 31 January 2018.
