According to the satellites of the European space program for monitoring the Earth Copernicus, the smoke from the fires that have ravaged the west coast of the United States since mid-August have traveled the 10,000 kilometers that separate them from Europe.

From this Wednesday, the light of the sunset should therefore pull more red than usual. 

Fires on the other side of the planet can change the color of the sunset in France.

For about a month, the western United States has been ravaged by numerous fires of unprecedented intensity.

These flames, which have already claimed the lives of 35 people, have reduced to ashes more than two million hectares since mid-August, releasing in fact large and thick smoke.

And according to the satellites of the European space program for monitoring the Earth Copernicus, these fumes have already traveled the 10,000 kilometers that separate them from Europe and France.

Emitting in the passage into the atmosphere "much more carbon in 2020 than any other year since 2003, that is to say some 29 megatonnes".

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"A small color change in the red"

Pushed by winds at an altitude of 5,000 to 6,000 meters, these fumes reached England, France, Spain, but also Portugal, Germany and certain countries of Eastern Europe.

If they are too high in the atmosphere to represent a danger for humans, they will however be visible from this Wednesday evening.

"We expect changes in the light at sunset, its rays passing through this layer of fine particles can be changed," explains to the microphone of Europe 1 Mauro Facchini, head of the Copernicus program.

According to him, we should therefore concretely expect "a small change in color in the red compared to normal".

A view of the movement of fumes.

Credit: CAMS (Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service) and ECMWF

80 times the surface of Paris devastated in 2020

But what worries this specialist the most, it is especially that this phenomenon is revealing "of the frequency and the exceptional power of these fires compared to previous years".

According to scientific consensus, it is linked to climate change, which worsens chronic drought and causes extreme weather conditions.

In California alone, fire has devastated more than 8,000 km² this year, nearly 80 times the surface of Paris, a record since 1987. President Donald Trump recently refuted any link between the fires and the climate crisis, prompting a new controversy in the United States.