Smoke from wildfires raging nearly 6,000km away in Canada is expected to reach Ireland over the coming days.
Images, posted by In Ireland, that seemed to show fiery-red smoke billowing over Dublin at the weekend were attributed to the effects of Canada’s wildfires.
But weather experts like Alan O’Reilly of Carlow Weather explained that the effect of the wildfires is not due to affect Ireland until this week.
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He told The Irish Mirror: "It was just a red sunset. The wildfires’ smoke hasn’t reached Ireland yet. But it is coming.
"It would be a stretch to link the Canadian wildfires to the images seen of Dublin.
"It is just the sunset projecting onto large cumulonimbus that were created by recent stormy weather."
Weather models using satellite image data have forecast that particles, emitted by burnt vegetation, will reach Ireland.
However, the Copernicus EU observation service has stated that the particles should not have any environmental impact as they will not fall to the surface.
When wildfires raged in Canada in 2019, the service’s scientists explained that the wildfire smoke gets caught in a jet stream and is carried across the Atlantic Ocean.
It is predicted that the smoke this week will remain confined to high altitudes.
The Copernicus EU observation service’s scientists said the smoke remains at high altitudes of up to 10 km into the atmosphere.
Weather experts have said that Ireland should this week expect hazy skies and vibrant sunrises and sunsets because of smoke from the wildfires.
The smoke is tipped to reach as far as Norway but the "thickest concentration is likely to move over Ireland and the UK", according to some meteorologists.
However, there is potential that smoke could result in reduced air quality generally.
The wildfires caused tens of thousands of Canadians to evacuate from their homes and when the pollution spread over the border to the US, it sparked air-quality alerts as millions of Americans were put under restrictions.
Air travel was disrupted, schools were closed, people were told to work from home as hundreds of fires burned across Canada.
Images emerged of people on streets wearing face masks, just like during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Environmental groups, who are concerned by a global climate crisis, fear that wildfires, like those which have raged in Canada, have increased across the northern hemisphere in the last decade.
The trend has been attributed by scientists to average temperatures across the north of the planet rising faster than they have closer to the equator – and global warming is to blame, they claim.
Snow and ice that has for centuries reflected away the sun is melting in the Arctic and going with it is the Earth’s ability to maintain temperatures at historical averages, they say.
The Copernicus EU observation service recorded that last month was the second warmest globally ever.
Worse, warnings over recent months that a return is likely later this year of the El Niño weather phenomenon, which causes the Earth to warm up, were declared optimistic last week when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officially announced on Thursday that it has already come back.
Meteorologists warn that El Nino will cause dangerous heatwaves, increased rainfall, droughts and thunderstorms.
El Nino has not happened since 2019, but temperatures have risen each year since and next year is predicted to be the hottest ever because of it.
Met Eireann did not yesterday issue any warnings about the potential effects of smoke from Canada's wildfires.
The smoke is also tipped to reach Norway, where its national forecaster said there will be "some haze or a smell of smoke".
But a spokesperson said "the number of particles in the air” will not “be large enough to be harmful to our health".
