September 28, 2009
Smoke over Northwestern, Central US and Mid-Atlantic/South
This post has been updated
Today MODIS Terra true color image (top, left) still shows us smoke over Oregon and Central US. HMS at NOAA (fires map here) confirms it in the text product and reports some other areas of smoke like Ohio and Indiana that could not be observed due to cloud cover. NRL model and forecast indicates that the smoke we see over Central US might be or may become mixed with dust.
More smoke can be seen over and offshore the Mid-Atlantic states and further south in MODIS image that was not reported. NRL/Monterey Aerosol Modeling (top, right) indicates that it could be haze but in fact it's very likely to be smoke according to LARC HSRL data (courtesy of Dr. Ray Rogers). In their images we can clearly see a layer around 4-5km with high values of lidar ratio (extinction-to-backscatter ratio) over 70 which is typically related to smoke particles. Also, HYSPLIT backtrajectories trace the air mass over their location back to the fires source.
No AOD map was available today from IDEA NOAA.
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AQI maps: good air quality overall with exception of California and Oregon
PM2.5 and Ozone
