Canadian wildfire smoke over Quebec, Maine and the Canadian Maritimes
* GOES-16 data posted on this page are preliminary, non-operational and are undergoing testing *Filaments of smoke aloft from Canadian wildfires were evident in GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) and Cirrus (1.37 µm) imagery (above; also available as a 24 Mbyte animated GIF) on 17 August 2017, drifting cyclonically eastward over Quebec, Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. The appearance of the smoke signature on Cirrus images was due to the fact that this spectral band is useful for detecting features composed of particles that are efficient scatterers of light (such as cirrus cloud ice crystals, airborne dust or volcanic ash, and in this case, smoke).
A comparison of GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) and Cirrus (1.37 µm) images (below; also available as a 21 Mbyte animated GIF) demonstrated that no smoke signature was seen on the infrared images (since smoke is effectively transparent at infrared wavelengths).
A more upstream view of the smoke feature was provided by a comparison of Terra MODIS Visible (0.65 µm), Cirrus (1.375 µm) and Infrared Window (11.0 µm) images at 1626 UTC (below). Again, note the lack of a smoke signature in the Infrared image. Depending on the altitude of these smoke filament features, daily composites of Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color images covering the 5-day period of 12 August – 17 August (below) suggest that their source was either widespread fires in the Northwest Territories, or intense fires in British Columbia (which included pyroCb that injected smoke to very high altitudes).