August 19, 2007
Did the smoke suppress the clouds in Montana
Jill's post tonight shows an interesting smoke blob at the eastern end of Montana. So why are there no clouds there? Is it because it is dry?
Don't think so.
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This is the 6 micron water vapor channel on Terra MODIS for the same image as Jill's smoke image below. There is no gradient in water vapor in that area so you would think that the cloud cover would be continuous. But it isn't. My conjecture is that the smoke particles suppressed the cloud formation. See the paper by Koren, Kaufman, Remer and Martins "Measurement of the Effect of Amazon Smoke on Inhibition of Cloud Formation", Science 27 February 2004:
Vol. 303. no. 5662, pp. 1342 - 1345 DOI: 10.1126/science.1089424