U.S. Air Quality

Light Smoke over Southeastern States; PM2.5 Concentrations over Texas and California

Moderate PM2.5 concentrations were reported today over California, Texas and the Northern Rocky Mountains and Plains states, as shown in EPA's Airnow animation (top left image). Smoke continues to linger in the Southeastern states. The source of this light smoke is the prescribed agricultural fires occurring over this region. Fire locations are shown in the top right image (overlay of MODIS Aqua RGB image with NOAA HMS fire product. Raised AOD (less or equal to 0.2) values over the US Southeastern states correspond to these optically thin areas, with smoke from the fires discussed above.The smoke extends to regions in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Column size distribution retrievals from the AERONET station, WaveCIS_Site_CSI_6, show coarse particle pollution, likely associated to the smoke plumes over the region.