U.S. Air Quality

Summer ends with a blast.

As Ray indicated on his post yesterday, the MODIS trajectories shown as eastward movement of the airmass that led to the high AOD on the Great Lakes region. The high AOD region has be associated with the long range transport of smoke from Oregon.The NOAA HYSPLIT backtrajectory analysis (not shown)indicates that the airmass over Baltimore, for this morning, came from the Great Lakes region. Here in Baltimore the smoke might be impacting the PM2.5 concentrations since last night. This is also verified in the lidar timeseries. High counts (more particles to scatter photons back to lidar receiver) due to particles near the surface were observed until 16:00 UTC. The PM2.5 concentrations at Maryland Department of the Environment Oldtown monitoring station have ranged between 21-37 ug/m3 (Moderate AQI Levels: 62-93) between 10:00-12:00 am. Keep posted as this air quality event will be updated tonight.