May 21, 2009
“Moderate” to “unhealthy for sensitive groups” ozone levels around the great lake area and visible smoke in Oregon
Today’s EPA AIRNow’s PM2.5 map (top, left) shows “moderate” air conditions mostly over southern California, Texas, Oklahoma, around the great lakes area and on the northern East coast. Ozone levels (top, right) are, at the most, “unhealthy for sensitive groups” around the great lake area.
The HMS map (bottom, left) shows a large area of thin smoke across much of east and coastal Texas stretching northward across southeast Oklahoma and western
Arkansas. According to the SSD fire team, this remnant smoke is likely due to numerous agricultural fires in Texas and Oklahoma yesterday and from large fires in West Louisiana. Those aerosols can’t be easily shown on the MODIS AQUA RGB image probably due to a strong cloud cover. And that’s probably also the reason why no strong AOD values can be seen on today’s MODIS AQUA imageView image. The HMS map also shows smoke over Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota and southwest Ontario.
On another hand, we can note on today’s TERRA RGB image quite a few smoke plumes in Oregon (bottom, right).
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Finally, thanks to the earth observatory, below is a fantastic astronaut shot taken from the space shuttle of what is called a “vog”, a blanket of volcanic fog, coming from the Kilauea Volcano, on the island of Hawaii.
