The results of a two year study measuring particulate pollution around prescribed burns in NSW have been summarised in a paper published this week in the journal Atmosphere. This major body of work from Work Package 3 made ~5000 hourly particulate observations around 18 prescribed burns, finding that in most cases, poor air quality did not extend beyond 2 km from the burn during the day, but in the evening this generally extended to 5 km, including upwind from the burn. Two of the burns caused smoke impacts more than 20 km away in the Sydney basin. Evening particulate concentrations were higher in still, cool evenings. The abstract is shown below and full paper is available open access from the journal.
