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Smoke over the Gulf of Mexico

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Aerosol Optical Depth derived product, with Surface Fronts plotted in cyan [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) images of the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) derived product (above) showed very high AOD values of 1.0-1.8 over the Gulf of Mexico on 14 May 2024 — associated with dense smoke from ongoing seasonal burning activity in parts of Mexico and Central America. This smoke had been moving northward and covering the entire western half of the Gulf of Mexico — and even parts of the Gulf Coast states — since the end of April. However, a cold front moving southward on 14 May was acting to push the northern edge of the smoke farther away from the Texas coast.

The sharp smoke vs. no-smoke boundary was also very apparent in GOES-16 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below).

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play MP4 animation]

Categories: GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images