OREANDA-NEWS. The western part of the United States has experienced the worst fires since 2003 this year, and smoke from them has reached Northern Europe. This was reported by the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

“Comparing fire activity in the US against previous years, CAMS has seen that activity this year has been tens to hundreds of times more intense than the 2003–2019 average in the US in general, as well as in several affected states,” the report reads. According to CAMS, the fires led to the release of large amounts of smoke and air pollution. For example, in the states of California and Oregon more carbon emissions in the air in 2020 than in the entire previous period of the organization’s existence since 2003 were recorded.

Major fires have been raging in the USA since August. Abnormal heat and lightning caused the disaster. On August 17 in the national park Death Valley (California), the highest air temperature ever observed on Earth: 54.4 degrees Celsius, was registered.