The effects of Australia's devastating bushfires have been felt on this side of the Tasman, Auckland Council has confirmed.
"Air quality monitors in the Auckland region returned some unusual results in early December," Auckland Council said on Wednesday.
Westerly winds had pushed a dispersed plume of smoke from the bushfires across the Tasman Sea, said Dr Shanju Xie, the council's air quality expert.
The result was an elevated level of fine particles at ground level, Dr Xie said.
"Our representative monitoring sites at Papatoetoe, Patumahoe and Penrose all recorded air quality measurements just above the national environmental standard on Friday 6 December 2019," Xie said.
"Australian bushfires produce huge amounts of dust and smoke, and our thoughts are with Australia as they continue to battle the fires and resulting poor air quality there."
According to the Resource Management Act, the council is required to report any breach of the national environmental standards.
High levels of fine particles were also reported after the fire at the SkyCity convention centre. Before this year, however, the last time any breach of national air quality standards had been recorded was in 2013, said council regulatory committee chair Linda Cooper.
"Believe it or not, this doesn’t happen very often in our region," Cooper said.
"Unlike other major cities in the world, our air quality doesn’t often reach extreme levels."
Cooper said the particles are "invisible to the human eye and can affect health, especially in asthmatics and people with heart and lung disease".
Dr Xie said normally the plume of smoke from Australia remains high "and only results in spectacular sunsets" but in certain conditions, the fine particles can drop to ground level.
Air quality levels have now returned to normal, Dr Xie said.
Many people across New Zealand reported seeing bushfire-caused sunsets in November, with smoke from the fires working to enhance the colours of the sunset.
The devastating bushfires continue to burn across Australia. In NSW alone 100 fires are still ablaze, according to the NSW Rural Fire Service.
With record temperatures forecast this week for many parts of the country, there is no respite in sight.
Extreme heat of nearly 50C is predicted for some places and NSW has been placed under a total fire ban.
Six people have so far lost their lives to the fires and hundreds of homes have been destroyed.
