Researcher deploys cutting-edge technology to assess smoke from the Los Angeles Area Fires

Smoke from the January 2025 Los Angeles fires. Credit: NASA

As the Los Angeles area faces severe wildland-urban interface fires, scientists are racing to understand the complex mix of pollutants from burning homes, vehicles, and infrastructure that remains largely unknown. Shantanu Jathar, PhD, a Colorado State University researcher supported by The Climate Program Office’s Atmospheric Chemistry, Carbon Cycle and Climate (AC4) program, is deploying critical air quality assets to conduct measurements of unique air pollution in the fire and smoke-impacted region. Dr. Jathar’s ongoing work contributes to a grant project awarded under an AC4 initiative to study fire and smoke at the wildland urban interface (WUI), focused on understanding emissions and smoke from structural fires (e.g. buildings, and household materials) within WUI events. Leveraging expertise from this ongoing research, Dr. Jathar has deployed portable “AirPen” systems to capture real-time data on pollutants such as PM2.5, black carbon, and hazardous compounds like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances during and after the ongoing LA fires. Much like COVID-era mobility restrictions, the latest fires again offer an opportunity for atmospheric chemists to understand air pollution – this time from a growing threat of fires at the WUI. Such fires lead to pollution that has not been studied, or even experienced before – a complex but little-understood mix of chemicals when fires consume homes, cars and everything they contain.