July 20, 2008
A bad air pollution day across much of the Eastern US and CA
The stagnant air continues in the US east and the particulate levels are in the unhealthy range throughout much of the middle US and east coast (left) and the ozone is high as well in Georgia (right) (Source: AIRNow)
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As I can attest from flying back from Austin, Texas, today, the optical depth was high over much of the southeast (see MODIS Terra AOD, left panel), so high that I could not see the ground in the afternoon. The MODIS AQUA AOD is blanked out on the NESDIS IDEA site because it was too optically thick and was identified as cloud. There were contrails all over the sky at 35,000' and this probably added to the opacity but the atmosphere was extremely saturated with water as well as aerosols. The IDEA correlation plots for the mideast are giving high correlations between AOD and PM2.5 for MODIS (r=0.75) but lower values for GASP (0.39) for Louisville (right image). Other sites are similar.
The GASP trajectory guidance shows that the haze in the southeast is caught in the far westerly Bermuda high and is likely to move west not east. We also have Tropical Storm Cristobal blocking the flow offshore and this will complicate the circulation making the next couple of days hazy in the southeast. Cristobal is forecast to give the mid-Atlantic a glancing blow and stay offshore. But stay tuned for Tropical Storm Dolly that has popped up east of the Yucatan (cross-posted on the Mesoamerican and Caribbean Smog Blog) and is forecast to cross the Yucatan and go ashore in Texas by Friday this week.
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Inciweb.org has listed the fires that are greater than 30,000 acres burned in California and their degree of containment. While the firefighters are making progress, many of these fires still have significant areas which are not controlled. Interestingly, the Evans Road fire in North Carolina is still going, according to Inciweb.
Basin Complex Wildland Fire Los Padres National Forest California 70% 134,118
Lime Complex Wildland Fire Shasta - Trinity National Forest California 67% 89,823
Indians Wildland Fire Los Padres National Forest California 100% 76,554
Iron Complex Wildland Fire Shasta - Trinity National Forest California 49% 55,545
Siskiyou Complex Wildland Fire Klamath National Forest California 29% 49,100
Evans Road Wildland Fire Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge North Carolina 75% 41,553
Piute Wildland Fire Sequoia National Forest California 97% 37,026
Canyon Complex Wildland Fire Plumas National Forest California 60% 30,812
Finally, I had the privilege to be at the Netroots Nation bloggers conference this weekend, where I had a chance to hear VP Al Gore deliver a rousing call to action on global warming.
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Mr. Gore shared the stage with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gina Cooper, Conference Chair.
Posted by Ray Hoff at July 20, 2008 11:09 PM