Why wildfire smoke could make the sun look different in the coming days

September 01, 2024

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - If nothing else in life is certain, the rising and setting of the sun always is. The colorful displays of reds and oranges make for picturesque views caught by millions each day.

But it’s the atmospheric conditions that can make those colors seem either dull or extra colorful. The current trough moving down the eastern coast will usher in smoke to the Gulf states this week which could mean redder sunrises and sunsets.

To understand why we see the colors change in the sky throughout the day, you must first understand how our eyes perceive color. Each visible color has a wavelength. Reds and oranges have longer wavelengths while blues and purples have shorter wavelengths.

Sunlight will naturally scatter through particles in the air like dust, smoke and even aerosols. The shorter the wavelengths, the easier for the light to be scattered out in the atmosphere. When the sun it overhead, it’s traveling through less atmosphere which means less scattering. The blue light is able to make its way to your eye because it isn’t scattered as much. This explains why the sky is blue.

When the sun is low on the horizon, it’s traveling through much more atmosphere which means more scattering. This means the light with the shortest wavelength (the blues) is scattered completely out. When there is smoke in the atmosphere, it allows for even more scattering which means the red color (the longest wavelength) is the only light able to make it through.

If there is a high amount of smoke when the sun is higher in the sky in the middle of the day, it can still appear reddish because the smoke particles are scattering out all other colors.

While smoke from Canadian wildfires is being brought down to the Gulf with an upper atmospheric trough, it’s isn’t clear how much will make it since it will be diffused during the travel south. But even a little smoke can make for a picturesque sunset or sunrise in the coming days.

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