What is smog

Photo: AFP via Getty Images/AFP via Getty Images A thick coat of smoke unfurled over the East Coast this week, blanketing the entire region with a toxic-looking haze and general panicky aura. The by-product of raging wildfires in Canada, the Big Smog brought with it a fresh wave of pandemonium and despair, particularly in New York, where New York City now has the worst air quality of any city on Earth. If exposed to the current air quality in NYC for 24 hours, it would be equivalent to smoking about 6 cigarettes. Anyone need anything from the bodega For many of us, seeing our cities disappear into a cloud of smelly, sulfur-hued fog is alarming and more than a little apocalyptic . For others, not so much. Plenty of Californian expats headed out to enjoy what my L.A.-born boyfriend called “golden hour all day” and loudly remind panicking New Yorkers that, actually, this is a totally normal slice-of-life experience out West. True, People will be on Twitter during the apocalypse like “when my whole city went underwater I was good but maybe I’m just built different 😤” Notably, the East Coast is not the place that’s In New York City, I kid you not the sky is literally yellow today …It’s giving smoking on opps— Cardi B (@iamcardib) an incredibly Manhattan photo atop the With the inescapable specter of doom quite literally hanging over our heads, a healthy sense of nihilism has emerged in our city’s streets. New Yorkers seem either ready to brave the elements for bodega nonperisha...

Peter Tailer was a jack-of-all-trades buzzing with creativity, his daughter said. At 43, the self-employed patent attorney, photographer and building superintendent had dabbled with Stirling engines, crafted a four-seat bicycle for his family and sent hot-air balloons flying from the roof of their five-floor house. Kept in a closed room, the Assemblage blew dirty air into a box about the size of a dining table that had water circulating inside of it. A pump pushed the water toward the top and made it shower down through a screen. The purified air would then flow through that trickling water and into a fan that forced it back out into the room.

Click to toggle navigation menu. • • Click to expand menu. • Click to expand menu. • • • • • • • Click to expand menu. • • • • • • • • • • • • • Click to expand menu. • • • • Click to expand menu. • • • • Click to expand menu. • • • • • Click to expand menu. • • • • • • • • Click to expand menu. • • • • • • • • • • • • • Click to collapse navigation menu. Haze blankets over monuments on the National Mall in Washington, Wednesday, June 7, 2023, as seen from Arlington, Va. Smoke from Canadian wildfires is pouring into the U.S. East Coast and Midwest and covering the capitals of both nations in an unhealthy haze. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) So how did “I’ve lived in Maryland, about 40 years, and this is the worst air quality from a forest fire I’ve ever seen,” University of Maryland atmospheric and oceanic scientist Russell Dickerson told WTOP. “The fires are so big and so hot. They generate a special kind of cloud; we call it pyrocumulus. The air, full of smoke, rises up high in the atmosphere, where it has a longer lifetime and can get caught on rivers of wind and transported to long distances,” Dickerson said. As the sun comes up, that high-altitude smoke is brought down closer to the Earth’s surface. “This morning, I walked out of my house and it smelled like people were barbecuing in the entire neighborhood,” Dickerson added. The unseasonably dry weather is also likely playing a factor in this smog event. Dickerson said the dry weather in much of the Northeast “exacerbates t...

smog, community-wide polluted smoke and fog, but it is commonly used to describe the pall of automotive or industrial origin that lies over many cities. The term was probably first used in 1905 by H.A. Des Voeux to describe atmospheric conditions over many British towns. It was popularized in 1911 by Des Voeux’s report to the At least two distinct types of smog are recognized: sulfurous smog and photochemical smog. Sulfurous smog, which is also called “London smog,” results from a high concentration of See also