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Pyrocumulonimbus cloud in Alberta

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-18 Fire Temperature RGB (top left), “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm, top right), Cloud Top Height (bottom left) and Cloud Top Temperature (bottom right) [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

10-minute Full Disk sector GOES-18 (GOES-West) Fire Temperature RGB, “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm), Cloud Top Height and Cloud Top Temperature (above) showed the formation of a pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) cloud produced by a wildfire southeast of Edson, Alberta (station identifier CYET) on 04 May 2023. Cloud-top 10.3 µm infrared brightness temperatures were as cold as -61ºC, while the multispectral Cloud Top Temperature derived product revealed values as cold as -66ºC. Cloud Top Height values reached 39,000 feet. It should be noted that these Full Disk sector images and products are (unfortunately) provided at a reduced spatial resolution in AWIPS.

A plot of 0000 UTC rawinsonde data from Edmonton, Alberta (below) indicated that the pyroCb cloud-top temperatures colder than -60ºC were close to the tropopause temperature, suggesting that some smoke and cloud material may have been injected into the lower stratosphere.

Plot of 0000 UTC rawinsonde data from Edmonton, Alberta [click to enlarge]

GOES-18 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site are shown below.

GOES-18 True Color RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Categories: Fire detection, GOES-18, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images