CIMSS Satellite Blog

A suspicious area of “haziness” began to appear over the Pacific Northwest region (specifically, Washington state and adjacent parts of northern Oregon and southern British Columbia) on the late afternoon and early evening GOES-12 visible images (above) on 06 July 2008. A MODIS true color image from the SSEC MODIS Today site (below) also shows the haziness over the Pacific Northwest and the adjacent offshore waters, as well as thick smoke farther to the south due to active fires that continued to burn in parts of California.

My first thought was: “Wow, all that smoke from the California fires has moved that far north again today (like it did on the first 3 days of July)?” – but that didn’t seem like a meteorologically plausible scenario for this particular day. Then I recalled seeing MODIS true color imagery of thick smoke from fires burning in far eastern Russia that was moving across the Sea of Okhotsk and the Kamchatka Peninsula on 30 June and 02 July; could this haziness seen on the GOES-12 visible imagery possibly be smoke from those Russian fires? Backward airmass trajectories using the NOAA ARL HYSPLIT model (below) seem to support that idea — air parcels arriving over Washington state at 2000, 3000, and 4000 meters above ground level came from the region where the thick smoke was seen on MODIS true color imagery several days earlier.

It is also interesting to examine the corresponding GOES-11 visible imagery (below) from the same time period as the GOES-12 imagery shown above. Why is the haziness over the Pacific Northwest region not as apparent? The answer to that question is: forward scattering. The forward scattering of light by the relatively small smoke particles increases as the angle between the sun, the smoke particles, and the GOES-12 (GOES-East) satellite approaches 180 degrees — this forward-scattered light makes the smoke appear “brighter” during late afternoon and early evening. The GOES-11 (GOES-West) satellite is positioned much farther to the west (at 135º W longitude, compared to 35º W longitude for GOES-12), so there is no forward scattering geometry to enhance the appearance of the airborne smoke over the Pacific Northwest region.

However, note that the hazy signature of the airborne smoke is evident on GOES-11 visible imagery from the next morning, when the sun was illuminating the smoke from the east (thereby creating a favorable forward scattering geometry with respect to the GOES-West satellite).

Wildfire activity began to increase across the northern portions of Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada on 30 June 2008. GOES-11 visible and 3.9 µm “shortwave IR” images (above) showed a number of thick smoke plumes (lighter gray features on the visible images) drifting southeastward from a large cluster of active fire “hot spots” (darker black pixels on the IR images). GOES-11 was placed into Rapid Scan Operations (RSO) during the afternoon hours, so images near the end of the animation were available at 5-7 minute intervals.

The largest fire was located between Pelican Narrows and Sandy Bay in Saskatchewan, as seen in an AVHRR false color image (below, viewed using Google Earth). A close-up view reveals that the fire had actually jumped the only road that was in that area (the seasonal road which connects Sandy Bay and Pelican Narrows). The GOES-11 shortwave IR brightness temperatures associated with this particular fire were as high as 341º K (68º C, 158º F), which is the saturation temperature of the 3.9 µm detectors on the GOES-11 satellite. Note that some small pyrocumulus clouds could be seen developing over this large and very hot fire on the GOES-11 visible imagery (above) as well as on the AVHRR false color image (below).

A closer view of the largest fire using AWIPS images of the 1-km resolution MODIS 3.7 µm and the 4-km resolution GOES-12 3.9 µm IR channels (below) shows the advantage of higher spatial resolution for displaying the shape and coverage of not only the largest fire cluster (located near the center of the image), but also the smaller fires in outlying areas. Many of the pixels were so hot that the IR brightness temperatures exceeded the 54.5º C upper threshold for AWIPS display, and showed up as black pixels (registered as “NO DATA“) on the imagery. The smoke from this fire was restricting surface visibility to 1 mile at Flin Flon (CYFO) and 3 miles at The Pas (CYQD) in Manitoba, even though those 2 sites were not in the direct path of the thickest portion of the smoke plume.

Some clues as to the locations of the hottest portion of the fire — which happened to be located within the eastern half of the active fire area, where the black “NO DATA” pixels were seen on the MODIS shortwave IR image — could be found by examining other MODIS images and products: note the darker black pixels on the 11.0 µm “IR Window” channel, the brighter white pixels on the 2.1 µm near-IR “Snow/Ice” channel, and the darker red pixels on the Land Surface Temperature (LST) product (below). AWIPS cursor sampling indicated that the hottest pixel on the IR Window image was 52º C (126º F), while the hottest pixel on the LST image was significantly warmer at 145º F (63º C).