Pacific Anthropogenic Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) in 2003
- Visualizations by:
- Lori Perkins
- View full credits

In this picture, heavy aerosol concentrations appear in shades of brown, with darker shades representing greater concentrations. Areas of purple on the land surface represent human population. Notice how heavy aerosol production and dense population areas correspond. Also notice how there are dense patches of red points in East Asia. These correspond with intense forest fires, sending vast quantities of aerosols into the atmosphere. Although this image gives the impression that the fires and plumes of aerosols may not be connected, in fact they are. There's a direct relationship between those fire point and the brown patches appearing to the East.

May 31, 2003 The MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite has been tracking the particulate pollution for more than seven years, gathering data as most of it drifted east across the Pacific Ocean. About 4.5 teragrams of particulate pollution each year could reach the western boundary of North America, which is about 15% of local emissions of particulate pollutants from the U.S. and Canada.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Animator
- Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
Writer
- Michael Starobin (KBRwyle)
Scientist
- Hongbin Yu (JCET UMBC)
Producer
- Michael Starobin (KBRwyle)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
Terra Anthropogenic Aerosol Optical Depth (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
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