News Earth

The worst wildfires can send smoke high enough to affect the ozone layer

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds can send soot and other damaging particles 23 kilometers into the air

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds

FIRE CLOUDS  Pyrocumulonimbus clouds are created by intense wildfires (one from a 2004 fire in Arizona shown). The fire clouds can reach higher into the stratosphere than scientists thought, where the plumes can have climatic effects.

Eric Neitzel/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

By Megan Sever

- More than 2 years ago

For the first time, scientists have seen exactly how towering clouds that rise from intense wildfires launch smoke high into the atmosphere, where it can linger for months and mess with the protective ozone layer.