By Maham Javaid
As Canadian wildfires poured smoke plumes over the United States this week, East Coasters found themselves captivated and concerned by the unnatural orange hue that took over the skies.
"Everything was completely orange. I've never seen anything like it before," Kimberly Saltz of New York City said. She said she remembers her first thought when she looked out her window Wednesday: "This looks like Mars!"
Looking across the East River, Saltz couldn't make out the contours of Brooklyn, and what she could see was bathed in an orange glow.
The sky gets its colour from the type and amount of tiny particles in the air, as well as the specific wavelengths of light they obstruct, experts said. This phenomenon, known as the Rayleigh scattering, is responsible for the orange sky, according to climate scientist Peter Kalmus.
On a day when the air in New York City or Philadelphia is not filled with wildfire particulate matter, blue light with its shorter wavelength is scattered more than red light, making the sky appear blue.
But when the scattered smoke particles strongly reduce the blue and violet light, they leave behind only the red and orange to pass through, Kalmus said.
"Rayleigh scattering strength depends on the wavelength of the light, the size of the scattering particle and the density of the scattering particles," he said. "Light with shorter wavelengths (blue) gets scattered and attenuated more strongly than light with longer wavelengths (red)."
The size, density and diversity of the wildfire particles in the air across various cities in Canada and the United States determine how the light is scattered.
"Anytime you have an addition of particles to the air from volcano soot or wildfires, it changes the way light bounces around the atmosphere," said Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. "The particles are the residue of the wood, leaves and pine needles that burned in Canada."
Some of the particles are large, but most are microscopic and some may be purely chemical, Marlon said, adding that it's all extremely "toxic."
The dangerous nature of the plume is affecting millions of Americans, as local governments urge residents to avoid or minimize spending time outside. Some have felt inspired by the orange to create and share "dystopian morning routines" on social media. Others said the changing colour of the sky filled them with a sense of dread and foreboding.
"As I was getting into my car yesterday, I saw a particle of ash all the way from Canada fall on me. And I could see smokiness in the sky," Marlon said. "For me, that brings a feeling of sadness, frustration and foreboding."
Those in the thick of the smoke are probably experiencing feelings of sadness, experts said. And for those who are away from the smoke but glued to their phones, doomscrolling images of orange skies may be feeling anticipatory anxiety.
"The visual image of the orange sky, and the limited visibility it brings, makes climate change and wildfires in this case very real," said Sarah Lowes, a clinical psychologist at the Yale School of Public Health. "All of this can bring about a fear for the future but also feelings of sadness or grief for our present."
Suzanne Reisman, a writer based in New York City, said that by midafternoon on Wednesday, the light inside her apartment was getting "weird."
"Outside the sky was orange, and the way that light filtered in kind of made my dining area glow," she said. "It felt creepy and scary and like the apocalypse is here."
Reisman said the visually orange sky brought about the end-of-the-world feeling because it was irrefutable proof that something was wrong.
"It didn't feel right for a normally blue sky to look orange," she said.
The Washington Post