Ash and soot from the Fort McMurray wildfire has drifted all the way to Europe and could speed the melting of Greenland's ice sheet, says a fire ecologist. A NASA satellite image from May 22 illustrating the aerosol index shows plumes of soot and ash, some of it from Fort McMurray, skirting around Europe. "When that column started to build over a couple of those really key days, it got the smoke way, way up into the atmosphere and it basically gets stuck in the jet stream," Gray said. Before the plume travelled east across the Atlantic Ocean, Gray said, it also travelled south, hitting large swaths of the southern United States. NASA satellite images, captured earlier this week, show blue streaks — representing dust and soot in the atmosphere — swirling over Spain and the U.K.

Source: CBC News May 25, 2016 14:35 UTC