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Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 Profile picture
@DrTELS
Dec 15 • 10 tweets • 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
- Domestic solid fuel burning is now the largest source of UK particulate pollution, overtaking traffic
- Government monitoring networks are not designed for static suburban pollution sources
- Citizen science is filling the gaps

[1/4]theguardian.com/environment/20…
Low-cost and reliable sensors are enabling communities to set up their own monitoring networks to raise awareness of pollution hotspots that are missed by national or local authority air quality monitoring:

@Chorley_Air @mwt2008
[2/4]map.purpleair.com/1/l/mAQI/a1440…
Personal pocket-sized sensors help individuals to understand their exposure where open data on air quality is lacking:

[3/4]
& the thread that led to all of this...
It's about a pub (which I do not name) breaking the 'smoke control area' laws that were put in place in the 1950s to stop the 1000s of deaths that resulted from domestic solid fuel burning each year in cities:

[4/4]
Many thanks to @DrGaryFuller for his relentless coverage of this resurgent issue:
Fires are the most polluting way to heat British homes this winter theguardian.com/environment/20…
Indoor wood burning raises women’s lung cancer risk by 43%, says US study theguardian.com/environment/20…
Worst London air pollution in six years as home fires burn theguardian.com/environment/20…
& I should thank @YahooNewsUK for their focus on how nasty it can get when you pit the freedom to burn what you want (the right to pollute) against the right to healthy clean air:
'Climate expert gets death threats after viral post about pub's log fire'
uk.news.yahoo.com/climate-expert…
TLDR:

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More from @DrTELS

Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 Profile picture
Dec 3
So I spent yesterday evening having a quiet night in. At around 11 pm I began to smell smoke *inside my flat*.
I went out to investigate…

This is a somewhat angry (but evidence-based) wood-burning thread.
*trigger warning* for urban wood-burners!

#WoodBurning 🔥💨🧵 [1/n]


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I live in inner-London (@LBHF). My flat is offset from a road by a building & car park, & gardens on the other side. All my windows & doors were closed. Below an air vent in my bedroom, I measured 34 µg/m3 of PM2.5 (close to unhealthy).
So I left my flat to investigate...
[2/n] Image
@LBHF I had a very good idea where this smoke was coming from. After a short walk upwind from my flat, I headed to the pub on the opposite side of the road from my estate (& not for a pint!) They were burning wood on an open fire. This is illegal (more details below).
[3/n]
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Read 19 tweets
Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 Profile picture
Oct 25
It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. We don't really know how the jet stream will change, but it will! We can't rely on the past to inform our preparedness for the future. Risk scenarios need to tackle the known unknowns, not only the known knowns. Here's my thread below:
This thread was put together on Friday 20th October, before the worst of the weather arrived. The emphasis was on why extreme wind & rain from the east (#StormBabet) is not on the UK's risk radar:
@jimmcquaid is right here. Forecasting provided plenty of warning, including geographically appropriate yellow, amber & red warnings. But the response might have been insufficient because the scenario was unusual & not part of civil contingency planning.
Read 4 tweets
Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 Profile picture
Oct 11
Smoke knows no borders. Our atmosphere is a global commons.
Experimenting with AI to highlight the farce of the denial culture around responsibility for haze (smoke pollution).
[1/5] Image
Which do you prefer?
[2/5]


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There's clearly a lot of smoke travelling across borders.
[3/5]
Read 7 tweets
Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 Profile picture
Oct 6
The world's worst air pollution crisis is happening right now across Kalimantan & Sumatra, Indonesia 🇮🇩
According to our monitoring network, PM2.5 is at a 24-hr average of around 300 µg/m^3 (hazardous AQI of 350), 1-hr averages peaking at 750 (above the AQI max)
A thread 🧵 [1/n]


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Persistent fires in Kalimantan, particularly in Central & South provinces, are sending a thick plume of smoke that by today has enfulged pretty much the whole of Indonesian Borneo (~500,000 km²). Millions of people have been exposed to hazardous air pollution for weeks now.
[2/n]
The situation is also bad in Sumatra, where fires in Lampung & South Sumatra are sending a thick plume north affecting millions on the island, but also densely populated cities across the Malacca Straits to Singapore 🇸🇬 & Malaysia 🇲🇾.
[3/n]
Read 14 tweets
Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 Profile picture
Jul 22
"I'm not aware of a similar period when all components of the climate system were in record-breaking or abnormal territory"
This is what I mean by "all components of the climate system"... [🧵1/n]

@GeorginaRannard @BBCNewsbbc.co.uk/news/science-e…
We're most familiar with air temperature records. These are being smashed for individual weather stations, regions & countries all over the planet. June in the UK was 0.9°C warmer than any previous June on record. Global assimilations show the same pattern.
[2/n] Image
The surface of our oceans have been warmer than any other time on record since *March* and the difference between previous records & this year is widening. El Nino is playing a role, but that has only just begun. The North Atlantic plot is from @LeonSimons8
[3/n]
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Read 11 tweets
Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 Profile picture
Jul 8
What are tipping points?
They are processes whereby a system experiences a shift in state when a threshold in its conditions (caused by forcing) is breached. The shift is relatively rapid & if you reverse the forcing, the system does not return to its earlier state.
[1/n]
Examples of systems that exhibit tipping point behaviour:
- Society (often related to critical mass where once a few people have adopted or contracted something, a rapid shift follows, e.g. viruses, tech adoption, fashion)
- Financial markets
- Earth's climate & ecosystems
[2/n]
A fire ecology example: From forest to non-forest. Stabilising feedbacks keep a forest a forest. But if you keep forcing (e.g. with logging & climate change), a tipping point is crossed & new mechanisms help to maintain the non-forest, even if you reverse the forcings.
[3/n]
Read 12 tweets

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