Tag Archives: smoke

A four-birds-eye-view of fires in Alberta

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It has been three years since the devastating Fort McMurray Fire – the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s recorded history. The city is still rebuilding. And, I’m sure the people of Alberta don’t want to be reminded of it. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, here we go again! This time, it is the town of High Level, Alberta that has been evacuated. This is one of four “out of control” fires currently burning in Alberta:

Map of known fires from Alberta Wildfire (24 May 2019)
Map of known fires from Alberta Wildfire (24 May 2019)

The red flame icons represent “out of control” fires, while the green ones are “under control”. This map was produced by Alberta Wildfire on 24 May 2019. The northernmost red flame represents the fire near High Level. According to Alberta Wildfire, the southern two fires started on 18 May 2019, while the other two started on 11-12 May 2019. But, as you shall see, they became out of control on 18 May.

This being Alberta, satellites are often the first source for spotting fires in these remote areas. Plus, Alberta is in a unique position: it is far enough east to be within the view of GOES-16 and far enough west to be within view of GOES-17. It is also far enough north to get several overpasses from VIIRS on both Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 each day. So, what do these satellites have to say about these fires? Let’s take a look.

We’ll begin with GOES-16, which is now operational as “GOES-East” and has been since December 2017. Since April 2019, the GOES-16 ABI has been running in Mode 6 operations. This means full disk images every 10 minutes. Here is the GeoColor loop (link goes to PDF file) from GOES-16, starting at 1700 UTC on 18 May 2019 and running until sunset (~0400 UTC 19 May 2019):

 

For the uninitiated, GeoColor is a blend of true color imagery during the day with a low cloud/fog detection product at night. True color is particularly useful for detecting smoke, as we have seen before. So, did you see it in the above loop?

I’ll admit, the clouds make it difficult to see, but there are two smoke plumes visible in that video. (It helps to view the video in full screen mode.) The smoke plume for the fire near High Level shows up first (around 1940 UTC), then the smoke from the pair of fires northeast of Lesser Slave Lake appears around 2150 UTC and become obvious around 0000 UTC on 19 May.

Here is the Fire Temperature RGB from GOES-16 ABI over the same time period:

 

This product is sensitive to hot spots – not smoke – but it still has an issue with clouds, which block the signal. Notice that the northernmost fire near High Level first appears in the Fire Temperature RGB around 1840 UTC – an hour before the smoke is really evident. The first fire northeast of Lesser Slave Lake is visible starting at 2200 UTC (10 min. after the smoke is visible), and the second one first appears at 2320 UTC (about 20 min. after its smoke plume appears). The fourth fire (the westernmost of all of them, and the one in the middle north-to-south) first appears at 2100 UTC, although it is in and out of the clouds, and its smoke plume is never very visible.

Compare that with GOES-17 ABI, which is now operational as “GOES-West” (since February 2019), and is also running Mode 6 operations:

 

 

These videos cover the same time period as the GOES-16 versions.

Moving clockwise starting at the fire near High Level, the first sighting of smoke according to GOES-17 is around 1900 UTC, 2200 UTC (first Lesser Slave Lake fire), 0000 UTC (second Lesser Slave Lake fire), and 2310 UTC (westernmost fire). This is 40 min. earlier, similar to, similar to, and not easily comparable to GOES-16. (Since GOES-16 never got a clear look at the smoke from the westernmost fire, it’s difficult to compare times against GOES-17, which was able to detect smoke from that fire. Also, I say a 10 minute difference is “similar to”, since it is a judgement call as to which image an analyst would confidently say they first saw the smoke or the hot spot.)

Comparing the hot spots in the same clockwise fashion, the time of first detection was 1820 UTC, 2140 UTC, 2320 UTC and 2050 UTC. This is 20 min. earlier, 20 min. earlier, similar to, and similar to GOES-16. If you don’t believe me, compare them frame by frame in this video:

 

GOES-16 is on the right and GOES-17 is on the left. When you can directly compare them like this, a few things jump out. 1) The fire near High Level appears to grow more in GOES-17 than it does in GOES-16. 2) The two fires near Lesser Slave Lake appear so close together in GOES-17 that they are difficult to distinguish as separate fires, although they are clearly separate fires according to GOES-16. 3) The westernmost fire is the most difficult to see due to the presence of clouds.

Here, it is important to note a few things. A) Alberta is generally closer to GOES-17 than it is to GOES-16. B) The position the clouds and the motion of the fire relative to the lines of sight of the satellites lead to significant differences between GOES-16 and GOES-17 in this case. C) The plural of “anecdote” is not “data”. The exact circumstances that apply here are not going to apply in the future but the concepts still will.

The fire near High Level moves perpendicular to the GOES-17 line of sight, and moves parallel to the GOES-16 line of sight (away from the satellite on a curved surface to boot!) with slightly more coarse resolution in GOES-16. That explains the differences in apparent motion between the two views. The differences in viewing angle also explain why the fires near Lesser Slave Lake appear separate (GOES-16) or together (GOES-17). And, clouds blocking the line of sight explain why the fire near High Level appears later in GOES-16, while GOES-17 had a clear view of the fire 20 minutes earlier. The differences in perspective offered by the two satellites also make it tough to tell which fire is furthest west (the one I’ve been calling “westernmost”).

Both geostationary satellites are viewing Alberta at a high angle. What about VIIRS on Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, which flies more-or-less directly overhead? Since these satellites are polar-orbiting, they can’t provide 10 min. imagery of the fires. But, they do combine to provide ~50 min. imagery of the fires for a few orbits in the early afternoon and early morning hours, and they have much better spatial resolution.

The first VIIRS overpass was from NOAA-20 at around 1920 UTC, and here’s what it saw (according to the Fire Temperature RGB):

NOAA-20 VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (1920 UTC, 18 May 2019)
NOAA-20 VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (1920 UTC, 18 May 2019)

This image is about an hour after GOES-17 first spotted the fire near High Level, which is the most obvious fire in the scene. In fact, the westernmost fire is hidden under the clouds and the fires near Lesser Slave Lake haven’t started yet. The closest time matched images with both GOES are provided below.

GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (1920 UTC 18 May 2019)
GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (1920 UTC 18 May 2019)

Approximately 50 min. later, Suomi-NPP passed overhead and provided this view:

S-NPP VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (2011 UTC, 18 May 2019)
S-NPP VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (20:11 UTC, 18 May 2019)

And the GOES view from approximately the same time:

GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (2010 UTC 18 May 2019)
GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (2010 UTC 18 May 2019)

Here the fire near High Level is quite a bit more intense, as you could see if you were to toggle back and forth between the two VIIRS images. This is a definite sign that the fire is a dangerous one! Still no sighting of the Lesser Slave Lake fires, which didn’t get going for another 110 minutes or so, according to both GOES. There was another NOAA-20 overpass at 2101 UTC, then a Suomi-NPP overpass that caught the western portion of the scene at 2151 UTC. Combine all four overpasses in an animation, and you get this:

Animation of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (18 May 2019)
Animation of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (18 May 2019)

Remember to click on the image to get the animation to play. If you look closely, you can see both of the fires northeast of Lesser Slave Lake in the NOAA-20 image from 2101 UTC – a full 50 minutes earlier than either GOES was able to detect them. But, they are just single pixels at this point, making them likely too small for ABI to detect them (particularly at such a high viewing angle).

As for the smoke, it’s not any easier to detect with VIIRS given all the clouds overhead (click to play):

Animation of VIIRS True Color images (18 May 2019)
Animation of VIIRS True Color images (18 May 2019)

You might have noticed in the above animation that Lake Athabasca is still covered in ice, which is not apparent in the Fire Temperature RGB. That means fire season in Alberta started before all the ice had melted!

Over the next few days, clouds weren’t as much of a problem so the hot spots and smoke plumes were easily visible from all four satellites. Here are direct comparisons between GOES-16, GOES-17 and the two VIIRS for 19 May 2019:

NOAA-20 VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (1901 UTC, 19 May 2019)
NOAA-20 VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (1901 UTC, 19 May 2019)
GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (1900 UTC, 19 May 2019)
GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (1900 UTC, 19 May 2019)
S-NPP VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (1959 UTC, 19 May 2019)
S-NPP VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB (1959 UTC, 19 May 2019)
GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (2000 UTC, 19 May 2019)
GOES-17 (left) and GOES-16 (right) Fire Temperature RGB (2000 UTC, 19 May 2019)

We can even do better than that and really zoom in:

Comparison between GOES-17 ABI, NOAA-20 VIIRS, and GOES-16 ABI Fire Temperature RGB images (1900 UTC, 19 May 2019) zoomed in at 400%
Comparison between GOES-17 ABI, NOAA-20 VIIRS, and GOES-16 ABI Fire Temperature RGB images (1900 UTC, 19 May 2019) zoomed in at 400%
Comparison between GOES-17 ABI, S-NPP VIIRS, and GOES-16 ABI Fire Temperature RGB images (2000 UTC, 19 May 2019) zoomed in at 400%
Comparison between GOES-17 ABI, S-NPP VIIRS, and GOES-16 ABI Fire Temperature RGB images (2000 UTC, 19 May 2019) zoomed in at 400%

Here, the previous images have been cropped to the fire near High Level, and zoomed in 400%. The difference in resolution between VIIRS and ABI at this latitude is obvious.

Here is a four day loop of True Color RGB images from both VIIRS (click to play):

Animation of VIIRS True Color images (18-21 May 2019)
Animation of VIIRS True Color images (18-21 May 2019)

And, click on these links for similar loops of GeoColor from GOES-16, GOES-17 and a side-by-side comparison of the two. (The videos are too large to embed here.)

And, finally, here is a four day loop of Fire Temperature RGB images from both VIIRS (click to play):

Animation of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (18-21 May 2019)
Animation of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (18-21 May 2019)

And links to MP4 video files from GOES-16, GOES-17 and a side-by-side comparison of the two.

The Land of 10,000 Fires

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Minnesota calls itself the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” – they even put it on their license plates. To an Alaskan, it seems funny to brag about that since Alaska has over 3,000,000 lakes. That’s like a Ford Escort bragging to a Bugatti Veyron that it can achieve highway speeds!

Alaska has Minnesota beat in one other area, and it’s one they’re definitely not putting on their license plates: the number of wildfires. OK, so it may not be 10,000 fires as my title implies, but there sure are a lot:

AICC Fire Map (28 June 2015)
Map of known wildfires (23 June 2015), courtesy Alaska Interagency Coordination Center

That map shows the number of known wildfires in Alaska on 23 June 2015 and was produced by the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center (AICC). To say that 2015 has been an active fire season in Alaska is an understatement. That would be like saying a Bugatti Veyron is a vehicle capable of achieving highway speeds! (By the way, if anyone in the audience works at Bugatti, and would like to compensate me for this bit of free advertising by, say, giving me a free Veyron, it would be much appreciated.)

Imagine being the person responsible for keeping track of all these fires! (That’s what the good folks at AICC do on a daily basis. There’s also a graduate student at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks working on this very same problem, who has come up with this solution.)  This is being called the worst fire season in Alaska since, well, the beginning of recorded history. 2004 was the worst on record, but 2015 is on pace to shatter that. By 26 June 2015, Alaska’s fires had burned over 1.5 Rhode Islands worth of land area (or, alternatively, 0.8 Delawares). By 2 July, the total burned acreage had achieved 3 Rhode Islands (1.6 Delawares; 2/3 of a Connecticut). On 7 July, the total hit 3,000,000 acres (1 Connecticut; 2.5 Delawares; 5 Rhode Islands). (2004 ended at 2 Connecticuts worth of land burned, so there is a chance the pattern could switch and Alaska will get enough rain to fall short of the record, but at this rate, that seems unlikely.)

It’s interesting to see how this came to be, given that there were only a couple of fires burning in the middle of June:

VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of channels M-10, M-11 and M-12 (21:28 UTC 15 June 2015)
VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of channels M-10, M-11 and M-12 (21:28 UTC 15 June 2015)

If you followed this blog last year, you should know about this RGB composite, called “Fire Temperature.” If not, read this and this. Click to the full size image and see if you can see the six obvious fires. (Two are in the Yukon Territory.) Now, count up the number of fires you see in this image from just one week later:

VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of channels M-10, M-11 and M-12 (22:16 UTC 23 June 2015)
VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of channels M-10, M-11 and M-12 (22:16 UTC 23 June 2015)

Why so many fires all of a sudden? Well, it has been an abnormally dry spring following a winter with much less snow than usual. Plus, there have been a number of dry thunderstorms that produced more lightning than rain. You can see them in the image above as the convective clouds, which appear dark green because they are topped with ice particles. (Ice clouds appear dark green in this composite. Liquid clouds appear more blue.) A number of thunderstorms filled with lightning formed on the 19th of June, and a lot of fires got started shortly after. Here is an animation of Fire Temperature RGB images from 15-25 July (showing only the afternoon VIIRS overpasses):

Animation of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (15-25 June 2015)
Animation of VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB images (15-25 June 2015)

It’s difficult to see the storms that led to all these fires, because the storms don’t last long and they typically form and die in between images. Plus, some of the fires may have started from hot embers of other fires that were carried by the wind.

Of course, when there’s smoke there’s fire. I mean – when there’s fire there’s smoke. Lots of it, which you’d never be able to tell from the Fire Temperature RGB. The Fire Temperature RGB uses channels at long enough wavelengths that it sees through the smoke as if it weren’t even there. But, the True Color RGB is very sensitive to smoke. Here’s a similar animation of True Color images:

Animation of VIIRS True Color RGB images (16-25 June 2015)
Animation of VIIRS True Color RGB images (16-25 June 2015)

Look at how quickly the sky fills with smoke from these fires. And also note that the area covered by smoke by the end of the loop (25 June 2015) is too large to be measured in Delawares – units of Californias might be more useful.

The last frame in each animation comes from the VIIRS overpass at 21:30 UTC on 25 June 2015. It’s nice to know that you can still detect fires in the Fire Temperature RGB even with all that smoke around.

Another popular RGB composite to look at is the so-called “Natural Color”. This is the primary RGB composite that can be created from the high-resolution imagery bands I-1, I-2 and I-3. The Natural Color RGB is sort-of in-between wavelengths compared to the Fire Temperature and True Color. The True Color uses visible wavelengths (0.48 µm, 0.55 µm and 0.64 µm), the Fire Temperature uses near- and shortwave infrared wavelengths (1.61 µm, 2.25 µm and 3.7 µm), and the Natural Color spans the two (0.64 µm, 0.87 µm and 1.61 µm). This means the Natural Color is not as sensitive to smoke and not as sensitive to fires – except in the case of very intense fires and very thick smoke plumes.

Well, guess what? These fires in Alaska have been intense and have been putting out a lot of smoke, so they do show up. Here’s a comparison between the True Color and Natural Color images from 19 June 2015:

Animation comparing the True Color and Natural Color RGB composites (21:50 UTC 19 June 2015)
Animation comparing the True Color and Natural Color RGB composites (21:50 UTC 19 June 2015)

Thin smoke is invisible to the Natural Color, but thick smoke appears blueish (because the blue component at 0.64 µm is the most sensitive to it). As you go from visible wavelengths to near-infrared wavelengths, the smoke’s influence on the radiation transitions from Rayleigh scattering to Mie scattering, and the light is scattered more in the forward direction. This makes the smoke much more visible in the Natural Color composite when the sun is near the horizon, as in this image from 13:47 UTC on 24 June:

VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2 and I-3 (13:47 UTC 24 June 2015)
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2 and I-3 (13:47 UTC 24 June 2015)

Notice the red spot in the clouds at 154 °W, 65 °N? (Click on the image to zoom in.) Here, the smoke plume is optically thick at 0.64 µm (blue component) and 0.87 µm (green component), but transparent at 1.61 µm (red component). It’s like the smoke is casting a shadow in two of the three wavelengths, but is invisible in the other. It’s the combination of large smoke particles and large solar zenith angle creating a variety of Rayleigh and Mie scattering effects leading to this interesting result.

A more dramatic example of this can be seen from the 12:57 UTC overpass on 21 June:

VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2, and I-3 (12:57 UTC 21 June 2015)
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2, and I-3 (12:57 UTC 21 June 2015)

Notice the reddish brown band of clouds just offshore along the coast of southeast Alaska.

But, that’s not all! Really intense fires may be visible at 1.6 µm, so it’s possible the Natural Color composite can see them. Here’s the Natural Color composite from 22:09 UTC on 4 July zoomed in on an area of intense fires:

VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2 and I-3 (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)
VIIRS Natural Color RGB composite of channels I-1, I-2 and I-3 (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)

Notice the salmon- and red-colored pixels at the edges of some of the smoke plumes? Those are very intense hot spots showing up at 1.6 µm (I-3). In fact, the fires were so intense that they saturated the sensor at 3.7 µm (I-4) and this lead to “fold-over“:

VIIRS shortwave IR (I-4) image (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)
VIIRS shortwave IR (I-4) image (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015). The color scale highlights pixels with a brightness temperature above 340 K.

Fold-over is when the sensor detects so much radiation above its saturation point, the hardware is “tricked” into thinking the scene is much colder than it is. In the image above, colors indicate pixels with a brightness temperature above 340 K. The scale ranges from red at 340 K to orange to yellow at 390 K. Channel I-4 reaches its saturation point at 368 K. Notice the white and light gray pixels inside the hot spots: the reported brightness temperature in these pixels is ~ 210 K – much colder than everything else around – even the clouds! This is an example of “fold-over”.

The reddish pixels in the Natural Color image match up very closely with the saturated, “fold-over” pixels in I-4:

Animation comparing the Natural Color RGB and I-4 images (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)
Animation comparing the Natural Color RGB and I-4 images (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)

What to do if we have fires saturating our sensor? Use M-13 (4.0 µm), which has a sensor designed to not saturate in these conditions:

VIIRS shortwave IR (M-13) image (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)
VIIRS shortwave IR (M-13) image (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)

Here, we have reached color table saturation (yellow is as high as it goes), but M-13 did not saturate. In fact, the “fold-over” pixels in I-4 have a brightness temperature above 500 K in M-13. That’s 130-140 K above the saturation point of I-4 (110-120 K above the top of the color table)! The lack of saturation is also why the hot spots appear hotter in M-13, even though it has lower spatial resolution:

Animation comparing VIIRS shortwave IR bands I-4 and M-13 (22:09 UTC 2015)
Animation comparing VIIRS shortwave IR bands I-4 and M-13 (22:09 UTC 2015)

The fact that intense fires show up at 1.6 µm is part of the design of the Fire Temperature RGB. Most fires show up at 3.7 µm (red component). Moderately intense fires are also visible at 2.25 µm (green component) and will appear orange to yellow. Really intense fires, like these, appear at 1.6 µm (blue component) and will appear white (or nearly white):

VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of M-10, M-11, and M12 (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)
VIIRS Fire Temperature RGB composite of M-10, M-11, and M-12 (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)

And, if you’re curious as to how all four of these images compare, here you go:

Animation comparing VIIRS images of intense wildfires (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)
Animation comparing VIIRS images of intense wildfires (22:09 UTC 4 July 2015)

Shortwave infrared wavelengths are good for detecting fires, visible wavelengths are good for detecting smoke and the Natural Color composite, which uses wavelengths in-between, might just detect both – especially when intense fires exist.