Smoke from a single wildfire can circle the globe
Massive infernos can create their own thunderstorms, launching soot into the stratosphere where it acts like a heat-trapping veil that travels thousands of miles.
When a wildfire becomes sufficiently intense, it can generate its own weather system called a pyrocumulonimbus. These fire-fueled thunderstorms act like giant chimneys, punching through the lower atmosphere to inject soot and ash directly into the stratosphere. Once there, the smoke particles are small enough to scatter light through a process called Mie scattering. This physics explains why a fire in the Canadian wilderness can turn a sunset in London a deep, bruised purple or a startling blood-red, even if the local air feels perfectly clean at ground level.