With more and more forest fires being more prominent, what is the likeness of the smoke cooling or changing the weather, E.G like when a mega volcano erupts?
In: Earth Science
To do so the smoke must be thick and extensive enough to block the sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth, over a long period of time. Otherwise the rays will penetrate the layers enough to heat the surface air, but the heat rising from that will at least partially be trapped by the layer of pollution, making matters worse. This is a variant of what green house gases do.
Yes smoke can change the weather. Increased rainfall and mild acid rain are likely to happen down wind.
The cooling part : So I think you are asking about the albido (light reflecting property) of smoke. Yes, nuclear and volcanic winters are a thing, but most of that is from little particles in the upper atmosphere (like blot out the sun level of particles) now the smoke from fires won’t reach that high, so all of the sunlight they absorb will be dissipated into the air around them. And to make it worse, less trees also cause heating of the ground and air in that location. Here is an article that discusses [local cooling](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7603) by adding trees to cities.
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