Topic 4d – Monitoring biomass burning and validating wildfires
Biomass burning in India on 8th November 2017, seen by GOME-2 measuring
the Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI). AAI indicates the presence of elevated absorbing aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere. Biomass burning and desert dust are the aerosols types that are mostly seen in the AAI.
EUMETSAT
Smoke from wildfires in the western United States and Canada on August 2, 2017, imaged by the VIIRS instrument on Suomi NPP. Actively burning areas, detected by VIIRS thermal bands, are outlined in red.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response
Graph showing mean daily fire emission 2003-2016 in grey and daily fire emission 2017 in red.
CAMS
This image is from Sentinel-2 and shows the high smoke column rising from the fire on 23 July 2018.
ESA
CAMS forecasts from the OMI instrument, captured the transport of the plume of volcanic SO2, from Bardarbunga Stratavolcano in Iceland, southward, while spreading over the continent on 21 and 22 September 2014. The plume stretched all the way from Finland through Poland, Germany and France to southern England. On the right is a parallel forecast, for which no OMI data were used, this did not show any elevated SO2 values, confirming that “normal” emissions of SO2 (including shipping and industrial
activities) could not explain the observed situation.
CAMS/ Zerefos, C.S., et al., 2017.
