October 8, 2009
Good air quality conditions continue; Smoke over Oregon
Today the National Interagency Fire Center reported 4 large fires in Arizona, California, Idaho, and Washington. Although, no significant areas of smoke or dust are reported by NOAA's Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product, smoke from these fires are visible in today's MODIS Terra "true color" image (courtesy of UW MODIS Today) over Oregon and Washington (top left). In addition, MODIS Terra AOD product shows high AOD levels over this area (top right).
As the previous days, air quality conditions over the Country were "good" and "moderate" during the day. According to Lane Regional Air Protection Agency the smoke produced by the fires mentioned previously did not produce a significant increase in the PM2.5 levels in Oregon (see image).
Cloudy skies prevailed over Baltimore during today's lidar observations. A homogeneous boundary layer was observed from 2:00-8:00 pm EDT (bottom left). This lidar timeseries was obtain with a new 355 nm LEOSPHERE elastic lidar system. This lidar along with ELF (532/1064 nm and 532 depolarization), ALEX (355, 386 and 408 nm), and a Sigma Space MicroPulse Lidar (527 nm) will be profiling the skies over the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area as part of our UMAP project.
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