U.S. Air Quality

Good and Moderate AQI; Fires continue and smoke spreads in east

Today, the air quality over the country was mainly good and moderate. According to PM2.5, moderate levels were read in the Great Lakes, Mississippi valley and Mid Atlantic regions (top left). Ozone levels were also read in the same region. In particular, unhealthy levels for sensitive groups were reached in the Great Lakes region in the afternoon.
Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product reported fires and smoke over the regions mentioned previously (top right). In the east of Mississippi River a light residual smoke from fires in the central Plains covered much of the Mid Atlantic, Great Lakes, Ohio and Tennessee Valleys and the Southeast. A ribbon of residual smoke, also believed to have originated from the central Plains fires, stretched southeastward from central Quebec across central New England and into the Atlantic. In the Dakotas and Minnesota an aerosol of unknown origin and composition was moving across South Dakota and Minnesota into Ontario. In addition, Modis TERRA reported high AOD levels over the Great Lakes region (image).

The smoke reported due to the different fires is reaching to Baltimore. The MODIS and AOD trajectories point out that the smoke is moving to the east where the Atmospheric Lidar Group in UMBC is measuring this activity (middle left). The size distribution plot obtained by data recollected in the AERONET station located at UMBC shows that big particles, in this case smoke, is been read over this area (middle right). This smoke was also visible in the images of the extinction profiles measurements made with our elastic lidar system, ELF(355 and 532 nm) where it is possible to see that the smoke appeared around 19:00 UTC on Wednesday and continue to descend until it mixes with the planetary boundary layer today at 18:00 UTC (bottom).