Wildfires in California turn skies orange across Britain
WILDFIRES that are sweeping California caused orange skies across Britain yesterday, meteorologists have confirmed.
Despite being 5,000 miles from the UK, the fires that have ripped through 470,000 acres in California, Oregon and Washington created large smoke plumes that travelled across the North Atlantic.
Weather forecasters, the Met Desk, said people in the UK might have noticed an “orange glow” on clouds yesterday morning as modelling from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US showed plumes originating on the west coast had crossed the Atlantic.
Mark Parrington, senior scientist at Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, part of the EU’S weather programme, said that the smoke had first reached Ireland before arriving in the UK and that a second wave crossed at 11am. Cirrus clouds, short, wispy, hairlike clouds found at high altitudes and that may appear whiter than any other cloud in the sky during the daytime, appeared to have an orange tint in many parts of the country.
Physicist Hugo Ricketts reported a red tint to the sun over Manchester and meteorologist Paul Knightley said that at midday there was still a hazy look to the sky. The appearance of red or orange skies in Britain is made possible by a west-to-east jet stream.
Residents of California have been reporting a more extreme phenomenon since Wednesday, when smoke particles high in the atmosphere led to the San Francisco Bay Area being plunged into daytime darkness with eerie bright orange skies. This is because the fires create millions of tiny particles which scatter in the atmosphere and absorb the sun’s light, causing darkness.
They make the clouds appear orange because when trapped in the atmosphere they only allow long-wave colours like yellow, orange and red light to reach the surface, while short-wave colours like blue are blocked, said the public air pollution agency Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
John Griffiths, meteorologist at the Met Office, added that the orange skies in the UK, similar to a sunrise and sunset, would have been most prominent during dusk and dawn because of the angle the sun’s light is hitting the particles. A similar effect was felt in the UK because the jet stream has carried the atmospheric particles, also known as aerosols, across the Atlantic.
Mr Griffiths said the jet stream will “start to meander” from tomorrow, which will bring warmer temperatures – the mercury could top out at 31C (88F) in southern England next Tuesday – but make orange skies less likely.