U.S. Air Quality

Smoke/Dust over the Pacific; Dry Season in South America

Today air quality conditions over US haven't changed much since yesterday with moderate conditions more persistently in Texas as can be seen in the AIRNow AQI loop (top, left).
HMS at NOAA reports aerosols over the Pacific offshore the coast of California which can be seen today in MODIS true color image (top, right). The source according to HMS is likely to be remnant smoke from the recent fires in Washington with some of the dust from yesterday. AOD over the Pacific was higher indeed confirming the presence of the aerosols (IDEA - bottom,left).

As a special feature today, I'm showing a MODIS image from South America (bottom,right), which is right now in their dry season which usually starts around June/July and ends around November. In this image we see the smoke over Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. The fires are more concentrated in Bolivia but some fires are also present in Central West and Northern portion of Brazil contributing for the smoke we see stretching from Paraguay to Amazon and Para, in Brazil.