Particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres (PM 2.5) are considered particularly harmful since they can penetrate deep into the lungs or cardiovascular system.<\/p>\n
Wildfires in 2024 led to above-average PM 2.5 levels in Canada, Siberia and central Africa, the WMO said. The biggest PM 2.5 surge, however, was in the Amazon basin.<\/p>\n
Wildfire season stronger, longer<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wildfire season has the tendency to be stronger and longer every year as a result of climate change,\u201d said WMO scientific officer Lorenzo Labrador, who co-ordinated the bulletin.<\/p>\n
Wildfires in Canada have ended up causing air pollution in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had that last year and this year as well. So you have a degradation in air quality across continents when the meteorological conditions are right,\u201d Labrador told a press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we have from these fires is essentially a witches\u2019 brew of components that pollute the air.\u201d<\/p>\n
The World Health Organisation estimates that air pollution causes more than 4.5 million premature deaths each year.<\/p>\n
The WMO called for improved monitoring and better policies to safeguard human and environmental health – and reduce agricultural and economic losses.<\/p>\n
The bulletin highlighted pollution hotspots in northern India.<\/p>\n
It said the Indo-Gangetic Plain, home to more than 900 million people, had experienced a marked rise in air pollution and winter fog episodes, which are growing in frequency and duration due to pollution, notably from agricultural biomass burning.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersistence of fog is no longer a simple, seasonal weather event – it is a symptom of escalating human impact on the environment,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Dramatic improvements in China<\/p>\n
PM 2.5 levels continued to decline in eastern China last year, which the WMO put down to sustained mitigation measures.<\/p>\n
When countries take measures to combat poor air quality, the improvement can be clearly seen in meteorological data, said Paolo Laj, the WMO\u2019s global atmosphere chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at Europe, Shanghai, Beijing, cities in the United States: many cities have taken measures and you see in the long term, a strong decrease\u201d in recorded air pollution, he told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver a 10-year period, Chinese cities have improved their air quality in a dramatic way. It\u2019s really impressive what they have done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laj said there was no all-purpose measure that could bring about drastic change, such as switching to electric cars, \u201cbut when measures are taken, it works\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Europe, \u201cwe don\u2019t realise what we were breathing in 20 years ago, but it was much worse than today\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n
-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres (PM 2.5) are considered particularly harmful since they can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[3041,68,4995,4996,4986,4442,4994,273,4999,71,4988,111,139,69,1118,4989,4991,4987,4984,4993,4990,3048,312,147,1361,4997,4998,4143,4985,377,4992],"class_list":["post-3407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-agency","tag-air","tag-away","tag-blaze","tag-brew","tag-climate","tag-continent","tag-environment","tag-friday","tag-from","tag-meteorological","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-organisation","tag-pollutants","tag-pollution","tag-producing","tag-quality","tag-releasing","tag-said","tag-says","tag-science","tag-that","tag-uns","tag-weather","tag-wildfires","tag-witches","tag-world","tag-wrecking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}