U.S. Air Quality

Smoke in Oregon and Northern California, strong light extinction over the Caribbean

According to the SSD fire team at NOAA and the HMS map (top, left), a large amount of residual light smoke from wildfires in California and Oregon is drifting to the east. The smoke covers northern California, East-central Oregon, southern Idaho, southwest Montana, and western Wyoming. The National Interagency Fire Center reported, in deed, a new large fire in California. Some smoke is clearly visible from space on today’s TERRA RGB image in Oregon and Northern California (top, right). The SSD fire team also describes a small patch of residual light smoke over Arizona.

There’s a clear lack of data over the US on the TERRA AOD map due to strong cloud cover but some strong AOD values can be seen in the Caribbean’s, starting over the Bahamas. This also leads to strong GASP AOD values over the area. A closer look (bottom, left) shows some strong AOD values over most of the Caribbean and even stronger over the Atlantic ocean starting with the US virgin islands down to Grenada.

The PM2.5 map (bottom, right) shows, at the most, “moderate” air conditions, especially in California, Southern Texas and in the eastern part of the US. The ozone levelsare “moderate” in very few areas throughout the US (California, Texas, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland).