Fires in Indonesia

  • Credit

    Image by Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory, based upon data courtesy of the NCAR and University of Toronto MOPITT teams.

Numerous fires on the island of Sumatra in early June 2003 produced high levels of carbon monoxide in the lower atmosphere over the region, as measured by MOPITT aboard NASA's Terra satellite.

Measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) from the Measurements of Pollution in The Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument on NASA?s Terra satellite show the pollutants from widespread biomass burning on Sumatra, Indonesia, being carried northward toward the Asian mainland. This image shows the mixing ratio of carbon monoxide at about 3 km (700 km) above the surface for June 1-10, 2003. This MOPITT image corresponds well with this true-color image from Terra MODIS that shows the locations of the fires and the resulting pall of smoke over Sumatra on June 8.

Carbon monoxide is a good tracer of pollution since it is produced as a by-product of the combustion associated with wildfires and agricultural fires. The reds in this image show the highest levels of carbon monoxide and blues show the lowest levels. The gray areas show where no data were collected, either due to persistent cloud cover or gaps between viewing swaths.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    Terra/MOPITT

  • Start Date

    2003-06-10

  • Event Start Date

    2003-06-08

  • NH Image ID

    10735

  • NH Event ID

    9153

  • NH Posting Date

    2003-06-23