January 4, 2009
Haze and fog continues in California; cloudy over much of US
We're glad to see our foreign correspondant contributing so don't miss reading Jill Engel-Cox's post below this one. AIRNOW is still undergoing some maintenance on their graphics screens. The data is still available in AIRNOW in text format and in AIRNOWTech for those with password access. In the two panels below, you can see the current PM2.5 readings in Bakersfield/Fresno (above) and Central LA/Burbank (below). Bakersfield is still socked in with heavy fog.
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You can see the haze moving offshore from LA in the MODIS AQUA RGB this afternoon.
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We've had California in our sights for months now and I thought it might be useful to showcase some of the other IDEA options that are available, even if the GASP IDEA and MODIS products have some intermittency now with some instrument problems in orbit. The panels below show the time series of PM in Fresno and the correlation plots that Hai Zhang has now implemented in IDEA for each site.
And Central LA has higher PM loadings than does Bakersfield or Fresno, but it is hard to visually see the haze against the bright grey background of the urban streets in LA. There is still skill in the GASP and MODIS AOD retrievals over these bright surfaces showing that we find pixels in the region which are dark enough to be used to retrieve AOD.
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