Canada collided with another dangerous season of forest fires, the smoke from which spreads through the provinces and reaches the United States. Fire rates 2025 year resembles a record season 2023 year, when millions of people in North America were exposed to dangerous levels of smoke.
For the past decade, satellites have allowed smoke plumes to be tracked, but only in 2D format, without being able to determine their height above the Earth's surface. The height of the plume is important: high in the atmosphere, smoke does not affect the air, which people breathe, while low plumes contain chemicals and PM2.5 particles, that penetrate deep into the lungs, exacerbating asthma and other respiratory and heart diseases.
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a network of ground-based air quality monitors for warnings, But their number is limited, that leads to generalized forecasts. New satellite technology, which researchers from universities and federal agencies have worked on for two years, creates a three-dimensional picture of smoke plumes, providing detailed risk data at the district level for urban and rural areas.
Creation of a national smoke monitoring system
The new technique is based on TEMPO satellite data (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution), launched NASA 2023 year. TEMPO determines the height of the plume, Analyzing the absorption of sunlight by oxygen molecules at the wavelength 688 nm. High plumes reflect more light into space, while low, where there is more oxygen, reflect less. Algorithms, developed based on this data, allow real time to track three -dimensional plume motion.
TEMPO data combination with atmospheric particles from Advanced Baseline Imager of Goes-R Noaa Satellites Allows you to assess health risks almost real-time health, If the clouds do not interfere. This is a significant improvement over terrestrial monitors, which, example, in Iowa (area 56 273 kv. miles) number only approx 50 stations, concentrated mainly in cities.
Noaa Aerosolwatch tool provides streaming images of smoke from goes-R in real time, And in the future it is planned to integrate data on the height of Tempo. Fireaq prototype, supported by NASA, Allows users to estimate the height of the plumes at the level of the areas, but updated only once a day and does not work in the presence of clouds.
Source: https://www.space.com