Science

Can satellites combat wildfires? Inside the booming 'space race' to fight the flames

Published

7 months ago

May 31, 2024

Can satellites combat wildfires? Inside the booming 'space race' to fight the flames

As the threat of wildfire worsens in California and across the world, a growing number of federal agencies, nonprofit organizations and tech companies are racing to deploy new technology that will help combat flames from a whole new vantage point: outer space.

New satellite missions backed by NASA, Google, SpaceX, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and other groups were announced this week and promise to advance early wildfire detection and help reduce fire damage by monitoring Earth from above.

Collectively, the roster of big names, billionaires, government groups and nongovernmental organizations reflects a considerable interest in using new technology to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems.

Among them is the Earth Fire Alliance, a global nonprofit coalition that recently unveiled its vision for a constellation of more than 50 satellites that will focus specifically on wildfires and their ecological effects.

Known as FireSat, the orbiting surveillance network will scan the globe every 20 minutes in search of wildfire activity — analyzing the landscape across six spectral bands that can spot signs of fires through clouds, smoke, darkness and extreme sunlight, according to the organization. The first three satellites will be launched and operational by 2026.

“It’s really a game-changer when it comes to resource allocation, because now we have this really high-fidelity picture that’s very, very granular of every single fire, which will ultimately help us better deploy resources in a much more efficient manner,” said Chris Anthony, an Earth Fire Alliance board member and former chief deputy director at Cal Fire.

Earth Fire Alliance’s FireSat Constellation will consist of multiple Muon Halo satellites equipped with state-of-the-art 6-band multispectral infrared (IR) instruments designed to detect and track the impact of wildfires across the planet.

(Muon Space)

Data and images gathered from FireSat will not only inform crews about the location of fires, but also how hot they are and how fast they are moving — helping to guide firefighting, emergency operations and evacuations, Anthony said.

He noted that during his career battling blazes, he often wondered when California would use its reputation as a global hub of technology and innovation to tackle the issue of wildfires.

“With every large wildfire we have — and the emissions and the carbon that’s released in that smoke — I feel like we’re in this negative feedback loop, which is going to be really hard for us to get out of,” he said. “And I strongly believe that technology and innovation is a core component of our ability to turn this ship in the other direction. I mean, we have to — I don’t think we have a choice.”

Indeed, while California has enjoyed two relatively tame fire seasons thanks to back-to-back wet winters, the threat has not dissipated.

The state has experienced the majority of its largest, deadliest and most destructive blazes since the year 2000, according to data from Cal Fire. The state’s worst wildfire year on record, 2020, saw nearly 4.4 million acres burn and the state’s first million-acre fire, the August Complex.

Experts say wildfires here are expected to grow larger, faster and more frequent in the years ahead due in part to warmer and drier conditions driven by human-caused climate change, as well as vegetation buildup and forest management practices. Similar trends are expected globally, where wildfires are projected to increase 30% by mid-century, according to the United Nations.

A satellite image shows smoke blanketing the western United States.

Earlier this year, Texas experienced its largest wildfire on record, which burned through more than a million acres, claimed two lives and killed at least 7,000 cattle.

Last year, a relentless procession of fires seared more than 45 million acres across Canada and sent noxious smoke billowing into parts of the United States and all the way to Europe.

“Even though California has been at the epicenter of so many large and destructive fires, it is becoming super clear that the wildfire problem that we have right now isn’t just a California, or a Western states, problem, but it is truly a global issue that we need to resolve,” Anthony said.

The Earth Fire Alliance’s satellites will join similar missions from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agencies announced this week that they will soon launch GOES-U, the last in their series of four advanced weather satellites, which provide continuous monitoring of much of the Western Hemisphere.

Roughly the size of a small school bus, the GOES-U satellite was designed and built in partnership with defense contractors Lockheed Martin and L3Harris. It will lift off on June 25 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and will provide rapid data for tracking severe storms, including destructive wildfires and their smoke, as well as tropical systems, floods, lightning, snowstorms, dense fogs and other hazards, officials said.

“NOAA’s geostationary satellites are an indispensable tool for protecting the United States and the 1 billion people who live and work in the Americas,” Pam Sullivan, director of NOAA’s Office of Geostationary Earth Orbit Observations, told reporters Wednesday.

GOES-U — which will be renamed GOES-19 once in orbit — will scan the Earth every 10 minutes, and can zoom in to track dangerous storms and hazards with 30-second updates, she said.

It will also carry the first operational compact coronagraph that will help detect space weather for early warnings of disruptions to power grids, communications and navigation systems. Earlier this month, a powerful geomagnetic storm prompted some reports of such impacts.

The GOES series will play a critical role in hurricane tracking, but perhaps its “biggest game-changing aspect” is its ability to detect wildfires, said Dan Lindsey, a program scientist with NOAA.

“We knew it could detect fires, of course, but it is able to do this in a much more impressive way than we foresaw,” Lindsey said. He said the GOES series has already detected fires the size of a small barn, but the new imaging tools will have four times better spatial resolution on its fire detection band.

“This is important because it allows us to get the word out to emergency responders, firefighters and take care of those fires as quickly as possible,” he said.

Experts are also experimenting with more terrestrial technology to combat conflagrations, including the use of artificial intelligence tools to fight wildfires in California.

One program — a Cal Fire partnership with UC San Diego’s ALERTCalifornia system announced last year — includes more than 1,000 high-definition cameras across the state that use AI to scan the landscape and alert fire crews to burgeoning blazes.

The system is already proving effective, with its pilot program flagging dozens of fires before 911 calls came in, officials said.

A rendering of a GOES-U satellite orbiting Earth.

Still, space is its own frontier which brings with it its own set of challenges. Rocket launches are known to emit considerable planet-warming carbon dioxide, along with black carbon, methane and other pollutants.

Last fall, a United Nations report also warned of new risks from growing space debris — including roughly 8,300 satellites and 35,000 other tracked objects that are circling the Earth, many of which are used for weather monitoring, early warning systems and global communications.

Too many orbiting objects run the risk of collision, which could set off a chain reaction that takes those systems offline, the report said.

But new regulations and designs are helping to mitigate some of those risks, said Brian Collins, interim executive director at Earth Fire Alliance. The potentially life- and property-saving benefits of the technology are also part of the balance.

A new economic report published by the alliance and the consulting firm Mandala Partners found that early detection of fires could reduce annual direct fire damage costs by approximately $1.2 billion across the U.S., Australia and Southern Europe. Wildfires in the U.S. alone cost about $11.3 billion annually, with property damage accounting for a large part of that — a trend that has already seen some insurers flee the Golden State and other fire-prone regions.

Indirect costs from fires in the U.S. could be as large as $415 billion annually, including labor productivity losses and health costs, the report found. Almost half — 46% — of the wildfire costs are borne by local communities and businesses.

The Earth Fire Alliance’s suite of satellites will fly at a lower orbit — about 370 miles from Earth compared with NOAA’s 22,000 miles — affording even more granular information in real time, Collins said.

“We view it as complementary to the big, heavy lift systems that NOAA and NASA produce,” he said. “Knowing where a fire is — on this side of the road or that side of a road, or on one side of a hill or another — is very important to the ecosystem and to the first responders.”

The Earth Fire Alliance raised $12 million in its early round of investments, and is on its way to securing an additional $50 million to $60 million to get the first three satellites into space, he said. The full constellation of 50 or more satellites will require about $300 million to $400 million, some of which will come from partnerships.

The alliance’s supporters include Google.org, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Minderoo Foundation and the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.

It made sense to tackle the issue of wildfires through the nonprofit structure, which can move more nimbly than government agencies that are tied to specific funding cycles, Collins said. However, data captured by FireSat can be integrated with NASA and NOAA and will be provided to all users for free.

“The reason for the organization was largely those two things — capturing a budgetary process, and interest and passion that can move a little quicker,” he said. “This was a nice blend to fill a gap of a capability while advancing the mission.”

Anthony, the former Cal Fire chief, said the FireSat program will not only help guide attacks on ongoing fires, but also provide an added layer of intelligence around prescribed fires, or fires that are intentionally set to clear vegetation and preserve forest health. For instance, the tools can help assess the right time to apply prescribed fire, track the fire’s intensity and integrate it with fire modeling.

The thousand-mile view afforded by the satellites will mark a new era of firefighting tools with a fidelity and resolution that have never been seen before, Anthony added.

“You can understand anything if you can see everything,” he said.

Science

2024 Brought the World to a Dangerous Warming Threshold. Now What?

Published

4 hours ago

January 10, 2025

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2024 Brought the World to a Dangerous Warming Threshold. Now What?

Source: Copernicus/ECMWF

Note: Temperature anomalies relative to 1850-1900 averages.

At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, Earth finished up its hottest year in recorded history, scientists said on Friday. The previous hottest year was 2023. And the next one will be upon us before long: By continuing to burn huge amounts of coal, oil and gas, humankind has all but guaranteed it.

The planet’s record-high average temperature last year reflected the weekslong, 104-degree-Fahrenheit spring heat waves that shuttered schools in Bangladesh and India. It reflected the effects of the bathtub-warm ocean waters that supercharged hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and cyclones in the Philippines. And it reflected the roasting summer and fall conditions that primed Los Angeles this week for the most destructive wildfires in its history.

“We are facing a very new climate and new challenges, challenges that our society is not prepared for,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union monitoring agency.

But even within this progression of warmer years and ever-intensifying risks to homes, communities and the environment, 2024 stood out in another unwelcome way. According to Copernicus, it was the first year in which global temperatures averaged more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above those the planet experienced at the start of the industrial age.

For the past decade, the world has sought to avoid crossing this dangerous threshold. Nations enshrined the goal in the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change. “Keep 1.5 alive” was the mantra at United Nations summits.

Yet here we are. Global temperatures will fluctuate somewhat, as they always do, which is why scientists often look at warming averaged over longer periods, not just a single year.

But even by that standard, staying below 1.5 degrees looks increasingly unattainable, according to researchers who have run the numbers. Globally, despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested in clean-energy technologies, carbon dioxide emissions hit a record in 2024 and show no signs of dropping.

One recent study published in the journal Nature concluded that the absolute best humanity can now hope for is around 1.6 degrees of warming. To achieve it, nations would need to start slashing emissions at a pace that would strain political, social and economic feasibility.

But what if we’d started earlier?

By spewing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, humankind has lifted global temperatures to record highs.

If nations had started reducing emissions in 2005, they could have made gradual cuts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

Starting in 2015, when the Paris agreement was adopted, would have required steeper cuts.

Starting today would require cuts so drastic as to appear essentially impossible.

“It was guaranteed we’d get to this point where the gap between reality and the trajectory we needed for 1.5 degrees was so big it was ridiculous,” said David Victor, a professor of public policy at the University of California, San Diego.

The question now is what, if anything, should replace 1.5 as a lodestar for nations’ climate aspirations.

“These top-level goals are at best a compass,” Dr. Victor said. “They’re a reminder that if we don’t do more, we’re in for significant climate impacts.”

The 1.5-degree threshold was never the difference between safety and ruin, between hope and despair. It was a number negotiated by governments trying to answer a big question: What’s the highest global temperature increase — and the associated level of dangers, whether heat waves or wildfires or melting glaciers — that our societies should strive to avoid?

The result, as codified in the Paris agreement, was that nations would aspire to hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius while “pursuing efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees.

Even at the time, some experts called the latter goal unrealistic, because it required such deep and rapid emissions cuts. Still, the United States, the European Union and other governments adopted it as a guidepost for climate policy.

Christoph Bertram, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability, said the urgency of the 1.5 target spurred companies of all kinds — automakers, cement manufacturers, electric utilities — to start thinking hard about what it would mean to zero out their emissions by midcentury. “I do think that has led to some serious action,” Dr. Bertram said.

But the high aspiration of the 1.5 target also exposed deep fault lines among nations.

China and India never backed the goal, since it required them to curb their use of coal, gas and oil at a pace they said would hamstring their development. Rich countries that were struggling to cut their own emissions began choking off funding in the developing world for fossil-fuel projects that were economically beneficial. Some low-income countries felt it was deeply unfair to ask them to sacrifice for the climate given that it was wealthy nations — and not them — that had produced most of the greenhouse gases now warming the world.

“The 1.5-degree target has created a lot of tension between rich and poor countries,” said Vijaya Ramachandran, director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research organization.

Costa Samaras, an environmental-engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, compared the warming goals to health officials’ guidelines on, say, cholesterol. “We don’t set health targets on what’s realistic or what’s possible,” Dr. Samaras said. “We say, ‘This is what’s good for you. This is how you’re going to not get sick.’”

“If we were going to say, ‘Well, 1.5 is likely out of the question, let’s put it to 1.75,’ it gives people a false sense of assurance that 1.5 was not that important,” said Dr. Samaras, who helped shape U.S. climate policy from 2021 to 2024 in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It’s hugely important.”

Scientists convened by the United Nations have concluded that restricting warming to 1.5 degrees instead of 2 would spare tens of millions of people from being exposed to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding. It might mean the difference between a world that has coral reefs and Arctic sea ice in the summer, and one that doesn’t.

Each tiny increment of additional warming, whether it’s 1.6 degrees versus 1.5, or 1.7 versus 1.6, increases the risks. “Even if the world overshoots 1.5 degrees, and the chances of this happening are increasing every day, we must keep striving” to bring emissions to zero as soon as possible, said Inger Anderson, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

Officially, the sun has not yet set on the 1.5 target. The Paris agreement remains in force, even as President-elect Donald J. Trump vows to withdraw the United States from it for a second time. At U.N. climate negotiations, talk of 1.5 has become more muted compared with years past. But it has hardly gone away.

“With appropriate measures, 1.5 Celsius is still achievable,” Cedric Schuster, the minister of natural resources and environment for the Pacific island nation of Samoa, said at last year’s summit in Azerbaijan. Countries should “rise to the occasion with new, highly ambitious” policies, he said.

To Dr. Victor of U.C. San Diego, it is strange but all too predictable that governments keep speaking this way about what appears to be an unachievable aim. “No major political leader who wants to be taken seriously on climate wants to stick their neck out and say, ‘1.5 degrees isn’t feasible. Let’s talk about more realistic goals,’” he said.

Still, the world will eventually need to have that discussion, Dr. Victor said. And it’s unclear how it will go.

“It could be constructive, where we start asking, ‘How much warming are we really in for? And how do we deal with that?’” he said. “Or it could look very toxic, with a bunch of political finger pointing.”

Methodology

The second chart shows pathways for reducing carbon emissions that would have a 66 percent chance of limiting global warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average.

Science

U.S. Efforts to Cut Emissions Stalled in 2024 as Power Demand Surged

Published

12 hours ago

January 9, 2025

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U.S. Efforts to Cut Emissions Stalled in 2024 as Power Demand Surged

America’s efforts to cut its climate change pollution stalled in 2024, with greenhouse gas emissions dropping just a fraction, 0.2 percent, compared to the year before, according to estimates published Thursday by the Rhodium Group, a research firm.

Despite continued rapid growth in solar and wind power, emissions levels stayed relatively flat last year because demand for electricity surged nationwide, which led to a spike in the amount of natural gas burned by power plants.

The fact that emissions didn’t decline much means the United States is even further off-track from hitting President Biden’s goal of slashing greenhouse gases 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Scientists say all major economies would have to cut their emissions deeply this decade to keep global warming at relatively low levels.

Since 2005, United States emissions have fallen roughly 20 percent, a significant drop at a time when the economy has also expanded. But to meet its climate goals, U.S. emissions would need to decline nearly 10 times as fast each year as they’ve fallen over the past decade. That seems increasingly unlikely, experts say, especially since President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to dismantle Mr. Biden’s climate policies and promote the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which generates greenhouse gases.

“On the one hand, it is notable that we’ve now seen two years in a row where the U.S. economy grew but emissions went down,” said Ben King, an associate director at the Rhodium Group. “But it’s far from enough to achieve our climate targets.”

The biggest reason that U.S. emissions have fallen in recent years is that electric utilities have been retiring their older, dirtier coal-fired power plants and replacing them with cheaper and less-polluting natural gas, wind and solar power. That trend mostly continued last year, with a few unexpected ups and downs.

The nation’s demand for electricity, which has stayed more or less flat for two decades, suddenly jumped by roughly 3 percent in 2024, in large part because scorching heat during the summer caused many Americans to crank up their air-conditioners. A smaller factor was that tech companies have been building more energy-hungry data centers in states like Virginia and Texas.

While power companies installed large numbers of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries last year to meet rising demand, natural gas use also rose to record highs, while coal use declined only slightly. The net result was that emissions from the power sector increased an estimated 0.2 percent, according to the Rhodium Group.

At the same time, transportation, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases, saw an 0.8 percent rise in emissions last year. Gasoline and jet fuel consumption both increased as Americans continued to drive and fly more after the pandemic. Nearly 10 percent of new car sales in 2024 were less-polluting electric vehicles, but those models still make up a small fraction of total cars on the road and have yet to put a major dent in transportation emissions.

On the flip side, emissions from America’s industrial sector — which includes steel, cement and chemicals — fell by 1.8 percent in 2024. Some of that may have been the result of lost output, as two hurricanes and a strike at the nation’s ports disrupted some factory activity in the fall, Mr. King said.

“It’s a reminder that there’s always some bumpiness in emissions,” Mr. King said. “It’s not just a question of how many electric vehicles are on the road or how much solar we’ve installed. A big portion of our economy still relies on fossil fuels.”

One of the most striking findings in this year’s data was that emissions from oil and gas operations dropped roughly 3.7 percent in 2024. Even though the United States produced record amounts of oil and near-record amounts of natural gas last year, many companies appear to have curbed leaks of methane, which is the main ingredient in natural gas and which can seep into the atmosphere and contribute significantly to global warming.

Over the past few years, the Biden administration and several states have adopted new regulations that require oil and gas producers to detect and fix methane leaks. Many companies also have financial incentives to capture methane to sell rather than vent it into the air.

Between 2014 and 2024, U.S. companies appear to have reduced the amount of methane that escaped, per each cubic feet of gas they produced, by 40 percent, according to the Rhodium Group.

Several experts have estimated that greenhouse gases generated in the United States could start dropping sharply in the years ahead if many clean energy policies stay in place, particularly the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into low-carbon energy technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear reactors, green hydrogen and batteries.

While Mr. Trump has pledged to scrap many of Mr. Biden’s subsidies and tax credits for electric vehicles and low-carbon energy, it remains to be seen whether Congress will agree.

That law has not yet had a major impact on the country’s emissions, said Mr. King, since it takes time for new factories to open and power plants to get built. But, he said, data shows that low-carbon energy and transportation now make up fully 5 percent of total U.S. private investment.

“That’s a leading indicator that things are changing quickly,” he said.

Science

How to protect yourself from the smoke caused by L.A. wildfires

Published

1 day ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

How to protect yourself from the smoke caused by L.A. wildfires

You don’t have to live close to a wildfire to be affected by its smoke. With severe winds fanning the fires in and around Pacific Palisades, the Pasadena foothills and Simi Valley, huge swaths of the Southland are contending with dangerous air quality.

Wildfire smoke can irritate your eyes, nose, throat and lungs. The soot may contain all kinds of dangerous pollutants, including some that may cause cancer. The tiniest particles in smoke can travel deep into your lungs or even enter your bloodstream.

Conditions like these aren’t good for anyone, but they’re particularly bad for people in vulnerable groups, including children, those with asthma or other respiratory conditions, people with heart disease and those who are pregnant.

Here’s what you should know to keep yourself safe.

Stay indoors

Minimize your exposure to unhealthy air by staying inside and keeping your doors and windows shut.

If you have a central heating and air conditioning system, you can keep your indoor air clean by turning it on and keeping it running. Make sure the fresh-air intake is closed so that you’re not drawing in outdoor air.

Keep your pets inside

They shouldn’t breathe the unhealthy air either.

Check your air filters

Clean filters work better than dirty ones, and high-efficiency filters work better than regular ones. The California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District recommend filters with a MERV rating of 13 or higher.

You might consider using portable high-efficiency air cleaner in a room where you spend the most time. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has information about them here, and CARB has a list of certified cleaning devices here.

Don’t pollute your indoor air

That means no burning candles or incense. If your power is out and you need to see in the dark, you’re much better off with a flashlight or headlamp.

If you’re cold, bundle up. This is not the time to start a cozy fire in the fireplace. Don’t use a gas stove or wood-fired appliances, since these will make your indoor air quality worse, not better, the AQMD says.

The CDC also advises against vacuuming, since it can stir up dust and release fine particles into the air.

Take care when cleaning up

You don’t want your skin to come into contact with wildfire ash. That means you should wear long sleeves, pants, gloves, socks and shoes. The AQMD even wants you to wear goggles.

If you’re sweeping up ash outdoors, get a hose and mist it with water first. That will keep it from flying up in the air as you move it around. Once the ash is wet, sweep it up gently with a broom or mop. Bag it up in a plastic bag and throw it away.

It’s a good idea to wash your vehicles and outdoor toys if they’re covered in ash. Try not to send ashy water into storm drains. Direct the dirty water into ground areas instead, the AQMD advises.

Those with lung or heart problems should avoid clean-up activities.

Discard spoiled food…

If you lost power for a significant length of time, the food in your refrigerator or freezer may be spoiled.

Food kept in a fridge should stay safe for up to four hours if you’ve kept the door closed. If you’ve been without power for longer than that, you’ll need to toss all perishable items, including meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk and cut fruits and vegetables. Anything with “an unusual smell, color, or texture” should be thrown out as well, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control Prevention.

Refrigerated medicines should be OK unless the power was out for more than a day. Check the label to make sure.

…even if it was in the freezer

Your freezer may be in better shape, especially if it’s well-stocked. Items in a full freezer may be safe for up to 48 hours if it’s been kept shut, and a half-full freezer may be OK for up to 24 hours. (The frozen items help keep each other cold, so the more the better.)

If items have remained below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) or you can still see ice crystals in them, they may be OK to use or refreeze, according to the federal government’s food safety website.

Ice cream and frozen yogurt should be thrown out if the power goes out for any amount of time. Meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, milk and most other dairy products need to go if they were exposed to temperatures above 40 degrees F for two hours or longer. The same goes for frozen meals, casseroles, soups, stews and cakes, pies and pastries with custard or cheese fillings.

Fruit and fruit juices that have started to thaw can be refrozen unless they’ve started to get moldy, slimy or smell like yeast. Vegetables and vegetable juices should be discarded if they’ve been above 40 degrees F for six hours or more, even if they look and smell fine.

Breakfast items like waffles and bagels can be refrozen, as can breads, rolls, muffins and other baked goods without custard fillings.

Consider alternative shelter

If you’ve done everything you can but your eyes are still watering, you can’t stop coughing, or you just don’t feel well, seek alternative shelter where the air quality is better.

Hold off on vigorous exercise

Doing anything that would cause you to breathe in more deeply is a bad idea right now.

Mask up outdoors

If you need to be outside for an extended time, be sure to wear a high-quality mask. A surgical mask or cloth mask won’t cut it — health authorities agree that you should reach for an N95 or P-100 respirator with a tight seal.

Are young children at greater risk of wildfire smoke?

Very young children are especially vulnerable to the effects of wildfire smoke because their lungs are still rapidly developing. And because they breathe much faster than adults, they are taking in more toxic particulate matter relative to their tiny bodies, which can trigger inflammation, coughing and wheezing.

Any kind of air pollution can be dangerous to young children, but wildfire smoke is about 10 times as toxic for children compared to air pollution from burning fossil fuels, said Dr. Lisa Patel, clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Children’s Health. Young children with preexisting respiratory problems like asthma are at even greater risk.

Patel advises parents to keep their young children indoors as much as possible, create a safe room in their home with an air purifier, and try to avoid using gas stoves to avoid polluting the indoor air.

Children over the age of 2 should also wear a well-fitting KN95 mask if they will be outdoors for a long period of time. Infants and toddlers younger than that don’t need to mask up because it can be a suffocation risk, Patel said.

What are the risks for pregnant people?

Pregnant people should also take extra precautions around wildfire smoke, which can cross the placenta and affect a developing fetus. Studies have found that exposure to wildfire smoke during pregnancy can increase the risk of premature birth and low birth weight. Researchers have also linked the toxic chemicals in smoke with maternal health complications including hypertension and preeclampsia.

What about other high-risk populations?

Certain chronic diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or other respiratory conditions can also make you particularly vulnerable to wildfire smoke. People with heart disease, diabetes and chronic kidney disease should take extra care to breathe clean air, the CDC says. The tiny particles in wildfire smoke can aggravate existing health problems, and may make heart attacks or strokes more likely, CARB warns.

Get ready for the next emergency

Living in Southern California means another wildfire is coming sooner or later. To prepare for the bad air, you can:

Stock up on disposable respirators, like N95 or P-100s.
Have clean filters ready for your A/C system and change them out when things get smoky.
Know how to check the air quality where you live and work. The AQMD has an interactive map that’s updated hourly. Just type in an address and it will zoom in on the location. You can also sign up to get air quality alerts by email or on your smartphone.
Know where your fire extinguisher is and keep it handy.
If you have a heart or lung condition, keep at least five days’ worth of medication on hand.

Times staff writer Karen Garcia contributed to this report.