Assessing PM<sub>2.5</sub> pollution in the Northeastern United States from the 2023 Canadian wildfire smoke: an episodic study integrating air quality and health impact modeling with emissions and meteorological uncertainty analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Between June 6 and 8, 2023, wildfires in Quebec, Canada generated massive smoke plumes that traveled long distances and deteriorated air quality across the Northeastern United States (US). Surface daily PM2.5 observations exceeded 100 µg m−3, affecting major cities such as New York City and Philadelphia, while many areas lacked PM2.5 monitors, making it difficult to assess local air quality conditions. To address this gap, we developed a WRF-CMAQ-BenMAP modeling system to provide rapid, spatially continuous estimates of wildfire-attributable PM2.5 concentrations and associated health impacts, particularly benefiting regions lacking air quality monitoring. CMAQ simulations driven by two wildfire emissions datasets and two meteorological drivers showed good agreement with PM2.5 observations, with linear regression results of R2 ∼0.6 and slope ∼0.9. We further quantified uncertainties introduced by varying emissions and meteorological drivers and found the choice of wildfire emissions dataset alone can alter PM2.5 simulations by up to 40 µg m−3 (∼40%). Short-term health impacts were evaluated using the BenMAP model. Validation against asthma-associated emergency department (ED) visits in New York State confirmed the framework’s ability to replicate real-world outcomes, with ED visits increased up to ∼40%. The modeling results identified counties most severely affected by wildfire plumes, the majority of which lack regulatory air quality monitors. Our approach highlights the value of integrated modeling for identifying vulnerable populations and delivering timely health burden estimates, regardless of local monitoring availability.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".