August 10, 2009
La Brea fire causing high AOD in California; Smoke over Canada
Today the air quality in the Midwest improved a little leaving the moderate conditions more to the East region as can be seen in AIRNow PM2.5 map (left). In California the AQI was much like yesterday's while MODIS Aqua AOD map (right)shows very high AOD values in the central part of California most likely caused by all the smoke from the La Brea fires in northern Santa Barbara as reported by the SSD /HMS fire team at NOAA. Ozone levels can be viewed here.
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The fires map from HMS (below) shows a very extensive area of smoke covering Canada and part of Northern/Central US. Smoke over California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona is also reported.
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MODIS images show the smoke over Canada and California as well as the fire spots. On the left is the Aqua image where we can clearly see the Santa Barbara fire and on the right image is Terra image showing the smoke covering good part of southern and central Canada.
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Errata: I made an update on the August 5th post regarding the smoke layer over UMBC. The source was more likely to be from the southern British Columbia fires than from Alaska but the later can not be excluded as a potential source as well (at least in the lower troposphere). The starting time for the HYSPLIT back trajectories and the altitudes were also changed. Special thanks to Mike Fromm from NRL.