Wildfire in Alaska
![GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and "Red" Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]](https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2019/05/ak_swir-20190501_122034.png)
GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]
A toggle between Suomi NPP VIIRS Day/Night Band (0.7 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.74 µm) images at 1216 UTC or 4:16 am local time (below) revealed the nighttime glow of the fire, along with a more accurate depiction of the size and location of the thermal anomaly.
Although the color enhancements were different, a comparison of Shortwave Infrared images from Suomi NPP (3.74 µm) at 1216 UTC and GOES-17 (3.9 µm) at 1220 UTC (below) demonstrated the advantage of imagery from polar-orbiting satellites at high latitudes. In this example, the 375-meter resolution VIIRS image showed 2 distinct fire hot spots that were not apparent in the lower spatial resolution — 2 km at nadir, decreasing to about 4 km over Alaska — GOES-17 image. A larger-scale view of GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared and Visible images from 02-04 UTC on 02 May (below) showed the fire as it exhibited its peak 3.9 µm infrared brightness temperature (51.3ºC or 324.5 K at 0210 UTC) and the smoke plume had drifted over 100 miles to the southeast, moving over Beaver Creek, Yukon (CYXQ). While most of the smoke was apparently lofted above the boundary layer, the surface visibility at Fort Greely PABI was briefly reduced to 6 miles at 09 UTC or 1am local time on 02 May. Note the lack of “false cold pixels” adjacent to the warmest 3.9 µm pixels — this is due to a recent change to the GOES-R ABI Band 7 resampler, as detailed in this blog post.![GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and "Red" Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]](https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2019/05/ak_swir-20190502_021033.png)
GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) and “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]
GOES-17 Visible (0.64 µm, top left), GOES-15 Visible (0.63 µm, top right), GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, bottom left) and GOES-15 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, bottom right) images [click to play animation | MP4]
GOES-17 Visible (0.64 µm, top left), GOES-15 Visible (0.63 µm, top right), GOES-17 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, bottom left) and GOES-15 Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm, bottom right) images [click to play animation | MP4]