meaning of さ after noun?


I can't figure out why in the sentence

> 「煙を吐き、その煙さに波香は自分で顔をしかめた。」

the second 煙 is followed by a さ. I know さ as a way to nominalize a noun. But 煙
already is one... so what function does it have here? I roughly would
translate the sentence as

> Exhaling, Namika frowned upon her own cigarette smoke.<

Could I just omit さ without changing the sentence meaning?




> I know さ as a way to nominalize a noun.

I'm assuming you mean a way to nominalise an adjective. And that's what we
have here. [煙]{けむ}い is an adjective meaning 'smoky'. So [煙]{けむ}さ is the
nominalised version meaning 'smokiness'.

Could you omit さ without changing the meaning? I guess it's not quite the
same, but that's a bit too subtle for my language skills.

