Global Smoke Forecast Visualization (Daily Updated)

Wildfires, ignited naturally and anthropogenically, occur globally throughout the year in different regions during their respective fire seasons. are a common occurrence aAcross the United States, wildfires are a common occurence during the spring and summer months. The implications of wildfires are widespread, posing immediate risks to ecosystems and infrastructure, dangerous air quality that is harmful for human health, and lingering effects due to changes in land surface. In addition to toxic chemicals, smoke emitted by wildfires contains particles with diameter smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5). PM2.5 is additionally dangerous to breathe in because the particles are small enough to penetrate the lungs and then enter the bloodstream. Wildfire smoke can travel thousands of miles, impacting populations distant from the source. It is therefore important that smoke is tracked and forecasts are provided to alert the public of impending poor air quality. 

Earth system models that couple aerosols with meteorology are valuable tools for providing air quality forecasts. NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS-FP) is one such system that provides near-real-time (NRT) analyses and forecasts of aerosols in addition to fields necessary for forecasting the weather twice daily each day at 00z and 12z (midnight and noon UTC, the worldwide time standard). This visualization is updated daily, displaying smoke patterns from yesterday through four days into the future. Within GEOS-FP, brown carbon represents the organic particulate matter that is emitted by wildfires. The aerosol optical depth (AOD) of brown carbon, as shown in the visualization animation, as wildfire smoke intensity, is a measure of the amount of sunlight that is prevented from reaching the surface due to smoke. The visualization displays brown carbon AOD values ranging from 0 to 1 (unitless), with colors progressing from light gray/brown to dark brown as smoke intensity increases, where larger values indicate more smoke in the atmospheric column, and if concentrated near the surface, would translate into poorer air quality.

The GEOS FP analyses and forecast are available for download at https://portal.nccs.nasa.gov/datashare/gmao/geos-fp/.
The “das” directory contains the analysis while forecasts can be found in “forecasts”. Total aerosol optical depth as well as the aerosol optical depth solely due to brown carbon can be found in the tavg3_2d_aer_Nx collection.
https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gmao-products/geos-near-real-time-data-products/