June 5, 2012
Fires in Mississippi Valley and Smoke Across Texas and Southwest Region. Dust/Sand Blowing causes Code Red in CA.
The first image below, courtesy NOAA HMS, shows the fire locations across the United States. The red dots correspond to active fires, and the grey areas are plumes. The strongest concentrations of fires are in the Mississippi Valley region. The largest smoke plumes, though, are above Texas and the Southwest Region. This plume appears to be following the low pressure system sweeping northwards from the gulf. In the second image emphasizes this counter-clockwise low pressure system over Texas in the GASP AOD image. You can also see the increased AOD from the smoke in the animation.
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The first image below, courtesy CALIPSO, shows the 532 nm Total Attenuated Backscatter (which is the radiation being reflected directly backwards from the constituent aerosol, with higher values corresponding to higher concentrations of aerosol at 532 nm). The image is centered over Texas, where you can see large aerosol activity in the first few kilometers.
It also looks like there may be an aerosol layer aloft in the left portion of the image, but with cloud contamination it is hard to tell. The data and graph below, courtesy AIRNOWTECH, shows the PM 2.5 surface concentrations surrounding Nipoma, California (San Luis Obispo County). These PM values led to the highest AQI values of the day of around 155 which puts them in the code red category. Although the plot is for PM 2.5, the PM 10 are much stronger in this region. This is a typical sign that there is dust or sand blowing in the region, and with the Oceano Dunes nearby this is most likely sand. (The AIRS Dust Score shows nothing.)
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