November 26, 2007
Special Feature: Continued good air quality in most of South Africa, with some light haze off east coast
Continuing our coverage of South Africa air quality as part of the GEO Summit, Monday had cloudy rainy conditions in the southwest part of South Africa, including Cape Town. The fire count product of MODIS identified one fire (shown as a red square on the image) near the city of Saldanha, but there was no smoke plume so it was likely not significant.
On the eastern half of South Africa on Monday, conditions were cloudy in the north but the air quality looked good throughout the rest of the region. NASA MODIS (below left) identified a few "hot spots" without significant smoke (shown as red squares on the image). Also in the MODIS image, some very light haze can be seen off the northeast coast near Durban and Richards Bay, where it is more visible over the Indian Ocean (pointed out by the yellow arrows). This is confirmed in the OMI NO2 real-time data (below right), which shows increased concentrations of tropospheric (bottom layers of the atmosphere) NO2 levels in the same location.
 |  |
Update: The data from the ground-based air quality monitors on Monday in Cape Town from the City of Cape Town Air Quality Monitoring Network all indicate good ('green') air quality.
