Fires in Russia = Smoke in Minnesota
Jeff Braun
Many large fires in southern/southeastern Russia have choked the skies with smoke. This image (first image) of the fires (locations outlined in red) was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite late last week (April 17, 2008). Most of these fires are agricultural fires set by people, much as we do over here in the late winter/early spring. However, there are so many buring at the same time with the low, mid, and upper level winds conducive to good ventilation and transport, that this morning’s GOES West Visible Image (April 22, 2008 – second image) shows the smoke plume reaching all the way across Minnesota, touching on wester Wisconsin (plume outlined in yellow).
1 Comment
Comment by Scott Bachmeier – CIMSS
Interesting images — I have noticed that the sunrises and sunsets
here in Wisconsin the past 1-2 days have been rather colorful (deep
reds and oranges), so I began to wonder about an Asian source of
either smoke or dust (which happens quite often during Spring). For
those who question whether smoke can really be transported halfway
across the globe, I used the NOAA Air Resources Lab HYSPLIT model to
calculate 7-day backward trajectories from 3 points in the central US
(located approximately along the leading edge of the hazy plume seen
in the GOES-11 visible image):
http://tinyurl.com/4eqnlo You will note that a few of the trajectories
do indeed suggest a source in the Lake Baikal region of eastern Asia,
which is often an area of major fires and smoke in the Springtime…