July 18, 2004
INTEX: Smoke in the middle U.S.
Smoke from the Alaskan fires continued to cover Canada and the middle U.S., today reaching as far to the south as Louisiana. The plume was clearly visible in the MODIS Terra images.
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The smoke was also visible as very high AOD in the MODIS AOD images from the IDEA site, although the AOD algorithm eliminated the densest part of the smoke plume, possibly mistaking it as cloud.
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The smoke can be seen in the University of Wisconsin lidar image for this morning and this afternoon, passing over at about 3-4 km.
The NOAA GASP AOD also showed the smoke over the midwest, doing a little better than MODIS AOD product at sorting cloud from smoke. (Note that this image is from earlier in the day than we have been posting recently, closer to the MODIS overpass time. Later in the day the mix of the smoke with clouds reduced the AOD retrieval).
Moderate air quality at the ground level throughout the midwest and east, confirming that the smoke was high in the atmosphere.
