A long-range smoke transport from Canadian forest fires to the Eastern Mediterranean during August 2023

^(a) Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, Physics Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece
^(b) Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens, 15236, Athens, Greece Lead Author e-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 9 April 2026

Abstract

In the summer of 2023, huge wildfires in Canada led to the injection of a remarkably high concentration of biomass burning aerosol in the atmosphere. These aerosol masses reached the city of Thessaloniki (Greece) at the end of August 2023, were they conducted with use of the Thessaloniki Lidar system (THELISYS) capable of measuring at 3b+2a+1δ and interpreted with available information from the AERONET columnar products. In 31^st of August 2023, a thick smoke layer was observed in the troposphere between 6-10km over Thessaloniki. Our results confirmed the main typical features of aged Biomass Burning (BB) particles, i.e., the decreased Angström exponent after long-range transport, enhanced depolarization ratio (δp532), in accordance with previous reported studies. These observations are indicative of almost aspheric smoke particles, probably because of aging processes. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of multiwavelength lidar observations, in offering a robust understanding of aerosol characteristics.