Aerosols from 2003 Southern California Fires (WMS)

  • Released Monday, March 14th, 2005
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:56PM
  • ID: 3132

A devastating series of fires occurred in Southern California during October 2003. The effects of these fires were detectable from space. The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument measures aerosol particles (microscopic airborne dust and smoke). TOMS was able to detect aerosols from these fires moving West over the Pacific Ocean and East over the continental United States.

This animation shows aerosol index over the western US from Oct 23 through November 1, 2003. Each image pixel corresponds to an area 1 degree in longitude by 1.25 degrees in latitude.

This product is available through our Web Map Service.

Color scale for this animation showing low aerosol values as shades of blue and green and higher values as yellow, orange or red. The units of aerosol index are dimensionless.

Color scale for this animation showing low aerosol values as shades of blue and green and higher values as yellow, orange or red. The units of aerosol index are dimensionless.

For More Information

See http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/aerosols/aerosols.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Series

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Datasets used in this visualization

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