July 5, 2007
Poor air quality in southern California
Air quality in southern California deteriorated significantly today. Fine particle concentrations (24 hour averages) in the inland Los Angeles region reached 90 ug/m3. MODIS aerosol optical depth values were over 1.0. I was surprised at the good AOD retrieval since MODIS AOD is often poorly correlated with ground values in the desert and urban terrain of the Los Angeles basin. It is possible that since the pollution contains some smoke from yesterday's fires, that the aerosols were more 'visible' to the MODIS sensor.
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Here is the MODIS Aqua true color image where the fire is marked with a wisp of smoke and the thermal anomaly outlined in red, but the haze is not obviously visible.
