SAN FRANCISCO – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s is closely tracking smoke from the Canadian wildfires moving June 9 from the Northeastern United States over the Atlantic Ocean.
NOAA is tracing the movement of smoke with the Advanced Baseline Imager, the first instrument on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-East (GOES-East) weather satellite. GOES-East observes the eastern United States and Canada, South America and the Atlantic Ocean from its longitude of 75 West. ABI makes observations every five minutes. Images tracing the smoke’s path can be found on NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Services GeoColor website.
Meanwhile, Aerosol Watch, from NOAA’s Center for Satellite Applications and Research, provides satellite imagery forecasters use to evaluate local air quality.
On June 8, a storm over Eastern Canada began pushing smoke from greater than 100 fires burning in Quebec south over the Mid-Atlantic and east over the Atlantic Ocean.
“That is the worst event I can remember by way of wildfires, actually within the last 10 or 15 years for the eastern U.S.,” Amy Huff, senior research scientist at NOAA’s Center for Satellite Applications and Research, told So long as drought conditions persist in lots of parts of the United States and Canada, though, “we’re going to see these wildfires each within the eastern U.S. and across the U.S. as well,” Huff added.
