Moderate to Unhealthy Air Quality in the eastern half of the country
Continuing from Jaime's post of yesterday, conditions have not improved much and it is likely to be worse before it gets better for the eastern US. A broad band of moderate PM readings are seen through the Great Lakes and Northeast States. In the image below, AIRNOW PM readings are shown for cities in the US in colored circles superimposed on the MODIS Terra AOD readings. There is a considerable amount of continuous and broken cloud which make the AOD data sparse, but there are areas of high AOD (red = 1.0) in the Northeast and southern Mississippi regions.
NRL's forecast discussion shows a very broad sulfate pollution event through this region with extended areas above 8 µg m-3. In the Rocky Mountain States, dust is forecast for today (left) and broad areas of smoke are forecast in the east (right).
In the Great Lakes, two images were worth studying. On the left, the Ohio River valley under popcorn cumulus can be seen and the haze is definitely enhanced along the river valley. On the right, you can see how the lake breeze front has pushed cooler air with less convection inland and the popcorn CU are suppressed. This is a good way to detect how far inland a lake breeze will penetrate.
NOAA's Hazard Mapping System (HMS) shows a uniform area that will be impacted by this smoke. USFS's Fire Incident Report is coming alive for the first time this season and there are a number of named fires in Alaska from a lightning storm yesterday and these were seen in the Aqua
MODIS RGB image yesterday. Mike Fromm of NRL has pointed out that a pyroCB may have initiated in the Yukon from one storm today in the area of 62N, -138W.
Posted by Ray Hoff at May 29, 2010 4:30 PM
