High-Resolution Image

This beautiful image of fires raging in southern California and the massive smoke plume emitted by the fires was acquired at 18:40 UTC on October 26, 2003 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard the Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra satellite, and provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response group.

Fires are formidable agents of disaster, voraciously consuming natural and man-made resources and concurrently emitting particulate and gaseous pollutants into the atmosphere. Remote sensing provides a powerful means of fire monitoring and disaster mitigation. Earlier fire remote sensing activities were limited to identifying fire locations, because the sensors used were easily saturated by strong signal from large or intense fires. With the enhanced radiometric range of the fire channel on the MODIS twin sensors (onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites), it is now possible to measure from space the radiative energy associated with remotely-sensed fires. One of the projects of the aerosol group within the Climate and Radiation Branch is to apply the radiative energy measured by MODIS into emission models in order to improve the estimation of smoke and trace gases emitted by fires. (Submitted by Charles Ichoku.)