April 25, 2009
“Good” to “moderate” air conditions and smoke over the Gulf of Mexico
According to today’s EPA AIRNow PM2.5 map (top, left), quite a few ground monitoring stations show “moderate” air conditions over the country. The strongest concentration of “code yellow” is in Oklahoma, Montana, around the great lakes area and on the northern east coast. Ozone levels View image are “moderate” in Arizona and over the northern east coast.
Today’s HMS map (top, right) and the SSD fire team show smoke plumes over the western and eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico but also hovering over the Atlantic, offshore from North Carolina to Connecticut. We can see, accordingly, strong TERRA AOD values (bottom, left) over the Gulf of Mexico, offshore from Texas but no MODIS measurement could confirm the presence of smoke over the eastern part of the Gulf or over the Atlantic. The TERRA RGB image (bottom, right) confirms the presence of smoke offshore from Texas. The rest is difficult to analyze due to strong cloud cover. Finally, let’s note some strong light extinction over western Texas possibly due to particles or cloud contamination.
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