U.S. Air Quality

Large swath of Asian smoke observed over US; Moderate AQI continues

Much of the nation experienced Moderate (Code Yellow) AQI today for PM2.5 as well as ozone in the Pacific Southwest (top left, courtesy AIRNow). Light to moderately dense smoke was observed from the plethora of fires over Canada and the Mid-west and corresponding elevated AOD observations can be seen from the MODIS sensor onboard the Aqua satellite (top right). However, the real smoke headline belongs to the substantial region of upper-level smoke that the HMS analysis team has tracked back to wildfires along the Russian/China border near Manchuria. According to their team, the plume of smoke was vertically transported to high altitude from a series of Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb), cumulus clouds that form over powerful sources of heat such as large wildfires. Faint indices of the Asian smoke were observed stretching from New Mexico through Wisconsin this morning by the GOES-WEST satellite (bottom left, image courtesy Mike Fromm). Ground-based lidar observations in Norman, Oklahoma, provided from the University of Wisconsin's lidar group, also captured the Asian smoke throughout the day around 9-11km (bottom right).