Impact of extreme wildfires from the Brazilian Forests and sugarcane burn- ing on the air quality of the biggest megacity on South America

Recently, extreme wildfires have damaged important ecosystems worldwide and have affected urban areas miles away due to long-range transport of smoke plumes. We performed a comprehensive analysis to clarify how smoke plumes from Pantanal and Amazon forests wildfires and sugarcane harvest burning also from interior of the state of Sao Paulo (ISSP) were transported and injected into the atmosphere of the Metropolitan Area of Sao Paulo (MASP), where they worsened air quality and increased greenhouse gas (GHG) levels. To classify event days, multiple biomass burning fingerprints as carbon isotopes, Lidar ratio and specific compounds ratios were combined with back trajecto-ries modeling. During smoke plume event days in the MASP fine particulate matter concentrations exceeded the WHO standard (>25 mu g m-3), at 99 %of the air quality monitoring stations, and peak CO2 excess were 100 %to 1178 % higher than non-event days. We demonstrated how external pollution events such as wildfires pose an additional challenge for cities, regarding public health threats associated to air quality, and reinforces the importance of GHG monitoring networks to track local and remote GHG emissions and sources in urban areas.

Automated summary

Recently, wildfires have caused significant damage to ecosystems worldwide and have had long-range impacts on urban areas through the transport of smoke plumes. A comprehensive analysis was conducted to investigate how smoke plumes from wildfires in the Pantanal and Amazon forests, as well as sugarcane harvest burning in the state of Sao Paulo, were transported and injected into the atmosphere of the Metropolitan Area of Sao Paulo (MASP), leading to worsened air quality and increased greenhouse gas levels.