Smoke and Air Quality
submitted to FJ Aug 23, 2018 Published in The Filipino Journal, Number 21, November 05 – 20, 2018 Magandang araw, mga kaibigan! Or is it? This issue I wanted to continue the theme of weather and its effects on our health. Let’s focus on another big issue we are seeing—and breathing--this summer: smoke. It’s pretty tough to enjoy the outdoors when there is a haze and smoky smell all around us. What’s going on? Again, this is Climate Change --a long-term shift in weather conditions marked by changes in temperature, precipitation, winds, and other indicators. The changes we are seeing include: warming at the Earth’s surface warming oceans that are becoming acidic more rapidly as they absorb ~1/3 of the excess carbon dioxide (CO2) being emitted into the atmosphere melting polar ice and glaciers rising sea levels more extreme weather events (more frequent and longer-lasting heat waves, more intense, heavy rainfall events, etc) Wildfires are very