Wood-Burning Makes Munich’s Air Dirtier Than Fire-Ravaged NSW
A number of countries have even made wood-burning a part of their drive to cut down on CO2 emissions. For example, cities like Munich, Germany, are seeing a rise in wood burning as a source of heat.
Moreover, many German cities are moving to ban diesel-powered cars because of the CO2 they produce and, more importantly, all the terrible fine particles they emit.
German cities choking on “green” wood smoke
Yet, ironically, as cities move to “clean” up their act and protect the climate, the opposite is, in fact, becoming the result.
German cities are increasingly choking on fine particles emitted by dirty wood-burning – and activists are turning a blind eye to the growing problem.
In the case of Munich, Swiss meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann recently pointed out that evening time air quality in the Bavarian capital becomes worse than the average air quality of much of New South Wales, Australia, even as bush fires rage.
Kachelmann tweeted:
All air measurement stations in the fire-affected New South Wales currently have better air quality than the wood-fired Munich.
dpie.nsw.gov.au/air-quality/ai
Munich (as always: clean in the daytime, filthy evenings/nights):
kachelmannwetter.com/de/luftqualita
No journalist is interested.”
What follows is the chart for Munich, yesterday evening (January 6), up to 8 pm for fine particles:
Chart source: https://kachelmannwetter.com/de/
Yesterday evening (Munich time), most stations in NSW showed, on average, cleaner air than Munich did.
In the evenings, many of Munich’s citizens like to settle down and light cozy fires to sit by – and feel good about their contribution to CO2 cutbacks.
The chart above shows how Munich’s air had become laden with 70 micrograms of fine particles by 7 p.m. – worse than the average air quality in NSW!
New South Wales air quality, Tuesday, January 7, 2020:
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Pierre and PSI Readers,
Yes, Pierre, ‘clean’ burning wood without any noticeable smoke, for whatever reason, produces small particulates which do not strongly scatter visible light. And yes, when there are no visible clouds, a ‘strong’ temperature inversion begins to form even before sunset which traps these small particulates in a shallow surface atmospheric layer during the night if there are calm air conditions. And the formation of this ‘strong’ shallow temperature inversion, seen in the atmospheric sounding made during the night near midnight, is evidence that that the transmission of the infrared radiation being emitted by the surface, is not being being significantly ‘trapped’ by anything in the atmosphere.
In Australia where the surface atmospheric layer is being strongly heated by the wild fires a shallow temperature inversion cannot form, because the surface is not be heated by solar radiation during the night, or day, to trap the particulates of the wild fire.
So, everything to which you refer is consistently understandable; if one considers everything that is needed to actually understand the different atmospheric systems involved.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Andy Rowlands
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Well well what a surprise. John Christy of UAH has warned repeatedly about the toxicity of wood smoke, resulting in many early deaths in third-world countries. Yet governments like Germany & Britain regard burning wood ‘carbon-neutral’, even though for Britain, the wood is imported from America, on diesel-burning lorries and ships.
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