Wildfire on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia

By Scott Bachmeier • 7 June 2016

Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 µm) images [click to play animation]

A large wildfire had been burning for several days from late May into early June 2016 (VIIRS fire detection hot spots) near the west coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. On 07 June, Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed smoke from the wildfire which became entrained within the clockwise circulation of a weak area of low pressure (surface analyses) just off the coast over the Sea of Okhotsk. Beneath the smoke aloft, a swirl of low-level stratus cloud associated with this low was also very apparent. Other features of interest seen in the 0.5 km resolution 10-minute imagery include the intermittent formation of standing wave clouds over the high terrain (east of the fire), and small ice floes drifting westward just off the coast of Magadan Oblast (northwest of the fire).

A closer view using Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 µm) and Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (below) revealed numerous hot spots (dark black to yellow to red pixels) around the periphery of the burn scar of the large fire, along with the brief development of small pyrocumulus clouds over some of the larger, more active fires. Note that the ABI instrument on GOES-R will provide similar imagery at high spatial (0.5 km visible, 2 km infrared) and temporal (5 minute Full Disk coverage) resolutions.

Himawari-8 0.64 µm Visible (top) and 3.9 µm Shortwave Infrared (bottom) images [click to play animation]

A Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color Red/Green/Blue (RGB) image viewed using RealEarth (below) provided a high-resolution view of the fire region and the plume of smoke curving around the low pressure feature.

Suomi NPP VIIRS true-color image [click to enlarge]

Categories: Fire detection, GOES-R, Himawari-8, RealEarth, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Suomi NPP, VIIRS

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CIMSS Satellite Blog

Wildfire on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia