U.S. Air Quality

Smoke plumes over the Southern Plains, Canada and Alaska

According to the SSD fire team at NOAA and the HMS map (top, left), a thin to moderately dense haze covers parts of
Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. The haze may be remnant smoke coming from fires in separate areas of New Mexico and Eastern Arkansas. In deed, the National Interagency Fire center reports active large fires currently burning in New Mexico and firefighters contained one large fire in Texas. Some fairly stronger MODIS AQUA AOD values (top, right) are seen over the area.
Also on the HMS map, smoke seems to stretch over a large part of Canada leading to stronger MODIS AQUA AOD values.
Finally, the particle plume over Alaska on the HMS map is presumed to be remnant smoke from fires in the area. It could also be mixed with ash coming from the latest volcano eruption (Sarychev Peak Volcano on Matua Island in the northwest Pacific) described by the Earth Observatory team and the CIMSS satellite blog. No particular haze could be seen on today’s MODIS AQUA RGB map (bottom, left) due to a strong cloud cover.
The EPA AIRNow’s PM2.5 map (bottom, right) shows a strong concentration of “moderate” air conditions over the eastern part of the US. The ozone levelsare, at the most, “moderate” around the great lakes area and Southern California.