Earth ID: 3132

Aerosols from 2003 Southern California Fires (WMS)

Visualizations by Jeff de La Beaujardiere Released on March 14, 2005

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.

For More Information

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

Visualization Credits

Jeff de La Beaujardiere (NASA): Lead Animator
Pawan K. Bhartia (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Paul Newman (NASA/GSFC): Scientist

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

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3132

Data Used:

Earth Probe/TOMS/Aerosols

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Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This item is part of these series:
TOMS Aerosols
WMS

Keywords:
DLESE >> Atmospheric science
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Atmosphere >> Aerosols >> Aerosol Radiance
NASA Science >> Earth

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0