Forest Fire Smoke Cools Arctic RENO, NV (KUNR) - Residents of northern Nevada may lament the smoke from California wildfires, but according to a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists conclude that wildfire smoke slows the melting of polar regions for several weeks to months at a time. Robert Stone is a research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and lead author on the paper. He says the way it works is simple.

Stone: Smoke from these fires actually have a cooling effect at the surface, in terms of the radiation. That means that the smoke is blocking the sunlight from reaching the surface, so therefore the surface tends to cool under the smoke.

Dr. Stone cautions, however, that the full climate impact of smoke particles, is still not entirely clear. For one thing, smoke particles captured within clouds or deposited
on snow may change the brightness of these objects, further affecting the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the surface. Dr. Stone says, his findings are in themselves significant, but that his research, perhaps more importantly, points to the vast and complex task of understanding the interrelated effects of a warming planet.
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