In a hangar in Broomfield, Colorado, a Gulfstream V jet plane is getting last-minute checks before it heads out on a daring mission. The aeroplane is part of a NASA campaign that will, for the first time, extensively sample 'fire clouds' ' towering, mushroom-like formations that reach into Earth's upper atmosphere above extremely large and hot wildfires, such as those now burning in France, Spain and the Pacific Northwest. 'We're seeing these intense fires and unpredictable behaviours,' says Teresa Campos, an atmospheric chemist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, who works on the project. 'It definitely feels like an important topic to be researching.' These massive plumes, known as pyrocumulonimbus clouds (pyroCbs), are generated in the hot updraft of the flames and can make their own weather, including winds and lightning strikes that might ignite new fires. PyroCbs also have planetary consequences, lofting smoke into the stratosphere,...
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