![]() ![]() GEOS-FP also ingests meteorological data like air temperature, moisture, and winds to simulate the plume’s behavior. To simulate black carbon, modelers include satellite observations of aerosols and fires. The black carbon data come from the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which assimilates data from satellite, aircraft, and ground-based observing systems. It is just one of several types of particles and gases found within wildfire smoke. This map at the top of the page shows the concentration of black carbon particulates-commonly called soot-over North America on July 21, 2021. Fires burning farther to the west in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest of the United States may have contributed a small amount of smoke as well. likely originated from a cluster of fires near the border of the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario, just north of Minnesota. ![]() While several forest fires are raging across North America, most of the smoke that found its way to the eastern U.S. The haze grew so thick at times that it even partially obscured the city’s iconic skyline. “That’s a magnitude of particle pollution that New York City hasn’t seen in more than a decade,” said Ryan Stauffer, an atmospheric scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In New York City, levels of fine particulate pollution rose above 170 on the air quality index, a level considered harmful even for healthy people. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA-20 captured the natural-color image of smoke over the northeast shown above on July 20. Minnesota was heavily blanketed by smoke from wildfires burning across the Canadian border, with the city of Brainerd and others recording “hazardous” levels of pollution, the highest designation of concern from the Environmental Protection Agency.Of the large cities in the northeast, Philadelphia and New York City had some of the haziest skies. Now, the effects are being felt thousands of miles from the flames.Īs the smoke moved eastward across Toronto, New York and Philadelphia on Tuesday, concentrations of dangerous microscopic air pollution known as PM2.5 (because the particles are less than 2.5 microns in diameter) reached highs in the “unhealthy” range for most of the day. But more than 80 large fires are currently burning across 13 American states, and many more are active across Canada. ![]() In southern Oregon, the Bootleg Fire grew so large and hot that it created its own weather, triggering lightning and releasing enormous amounts of smoke. In recent weeks, a series of near-relentless heat waves and deepening drought linked to climate change have helped to fuel exploding wildfires. Air quality remained in the unhealthy range across much of the East Coast on Wednesday morning as the haze pushed southward. Wildfire smoke from Canada and the Western United States stretched across the continent this week, covering skies in a thick haze and triggering health alerts from Toronto to Philadelphia. Source: Global Systems Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |