April 27, 2008
Haze through midwest, fires in California
There is an area of elevated haze through the midwest seen in this morning's Terra imagery (below, left). It doesn't seem to be impacting ground level PM2.5. On the right, you can see that the Terra AOD is over 0.6 which is very high for this region.
In the west, a fire in Sierra Madre, California, has caused the evacuation of 1000 people. California is covered by significant thick cirrus today and so we can't see it from space. There is also a single reading of elevated PM2.5 into the hazardous for sensitive groups level in El Paso, TX. No clearly apparent cause can be seen in the satellite imagery.
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Central America is on fire, however, and the NOAA Hazard Mapping System has identified significant areas of haze (left panel). While trying to spot the Sierra Madre fire, I looked at the USDA MODIS fire maps. With current fires (in the last 6-12 hours) identified in red, I spotted two fires at a location I know well. Early in my career, I did an air pollution study at Nanticoke, Ontario, which has a large coal fired power plant. But the two red dots didn't align with the power plant. On the right image below, the fires (red dots) are actually northwest of the powerplant right in the middle of the Texaco Refinery. Amazing that we can see the heat from the refinery operations from space. It is possible that these are flaring operations.
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