We missed the poor air quality in my home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last week. Above left is a photo I took from the airplane on Monday showing the hazy skies over Marquette, Michigan. The photo (right) shows the vast forests of the Upper Peninsula surrounding the Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport in Gwinn, Michigan.
Wildfires in northern Ontario and other parts of Canada generate smoke that the Westerlies (the prevailing wind patterns) bring over the Great Lakes. The thought that came into my head is that this is another sign of the impact of climate change. I don’t remember Canadian forest fire smoke causing poor air quality growing up here. Here is what Claude and I found regarding data for Canadian wildfires. It is a big country, and there were some conflicting data sets, but below is a summary table.
| Historical Average Area Burned Dating Back to the 1950s | 3 million hectares (UN Food & Agriculture Organization) |
| Ten-Year Average (2015-2025) | 4 million hectares (Farm Week Now – Canada) |
| Twenty-five-Year Average (2000-2025) | 3 million hectares (Deseret News – LDS media Salt Lake City) |
| 2023 Fire Season | 17.3 million hectares (Statista – nice table) |
| 2025 Fire Season | 8.8 million hectares (Farm Week Now – Canada) |
| 2026 Fire Season (so far…) | 2.78 million hectares (Medical Daily) |
The fire seasons of 2023 and 2025 were huge outliers to the historical average. The amount of precipitation and lightning strikes annually determines the amount and intensity of forest fires. Global wind patterns are also highly variable, so it is bad luck this summer that put the smoke right over the Great Lakes. It will be interesting to see how future fire seasons go over the next 5 to 10 years. I sense that a drier North American West will cause more fires and hence, more smoky summers for the Upper Peninsula. This is a direct result of too many byproducts of fossil fuel consumption in the atmosphere causing long-term climate change. I fear for the forests of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the future. Ezra Klein’s conversation with Bill McKibben is a good listen for people wanting to learn more.
Thankfully, thunderstorms, steady rain, and winds the past couple of days have cleared the skies, so today’s range is between 11 and 19 AQI in the Western Upper Peninsula. I love the fresh air of the UP! Oliver and I took advantage of the changed conditions and played a set of tennis (6-1 victory for me). After playing poorly against my son Owen in Costa Rica, I want to play more tennis this week to improve my game. Oliver’s tennis game is strong, and we had a great time yesterday!
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