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RE: tracking smoke

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DB
Dan Bikos, modified 8 Years ago.

tracking smoke

Youngling Posts: 6 Join Date: 6/2/15 Recent Posts
(Sent by Jeff Manion)

With the dense smoke moving through the northern Plains today, I was thinking about ways to follow it on satellite.  Obviously the vis. works well during daylight hours.  The GASP product does, too.  Nighttime options are more limited, of course.  So far, I'm only finding the VIIRS DNB stuff to be helpful, but it has its obvious limitations.  Am I forgetting about other products we could recommend to our forecasters...esp. at night?

Thanks,

Jeff
DB
Dan Bikos, modified 8 Years ago.

RE: tracking smoke

Youngling Posts: 6 Join Date: 6/2/15 Recent Posts
Visible imagery at night can be used -- if you have access to Day-Night band imagery from Suomi NPP. For example,  ( http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/150701_0811z_suomi_npp_viirs_DNB_IR_Canadian_Wildfire_Smoke_anim.gif )  IR Imagery will rarely show the smoke plume (although, of course, 3.9 imagery can show the plume source if the fire is burning).  Night-time smoke detection from satellite is definitely a big challenge.

During the day, true-color imagery works well, for example imagery from MODIS Today (http://ge.ssec.wisc.edu/modis-today) -- Here's an example from July 1st, 2015, for example.  SSEC's RealEarth ((http://re.ssec.wisc.edu) also has true-color imagery -- including from Suomi NPP.

GASP shows data, too, but only daytime (it uses the visible channel on GOES):  http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/FIRE/GASP/loop.html  And theIDEA website is helpful too -- showing model trajectories and aerosol optical depth.  http://raqms-ops.ssec.wisc.edu/ is also a helpful website, showing modeling results.