Fires in Central America
Smoke Plume over Eastern Canada
31 May 2007
In late May, a massive smoke plume hundreds of kilometers across bleweastward over New Brunswick toward the Atlantic Ocean. On 26 May 2007, theModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Terra satellite captured thisimage at 11:40 a.m. local time. By the time MODIS took this picture, the smokeappeared to have completely detached itself from the source, a large fireburning in southwestern Quebec, beyond the western edge of this image.
Terra
29 May 2007
In this image, the smoke appears as a gray-beige opaque mass with fuzzy,translucent edges. The plume is thickest in the southwest and diminishes towardthe northeast. Just southwest of the plume is a red outline indicating a hotspotanarea where MODIS detected anomalously warm surface temperatures, such as thoseresulting from fires. This hotspot, however, is not the source for this smokeplume. According to a bulletinfrom the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the southwesternQuebec fire (visible in this wider-areaview as a semi-circular arrangement of hotspots at image left) was thesource.
According to reports from the CanadianInteragency Forest Fire Centre on 29 May, that fire was estimated at 63,211hectares, and it was classified as being held. At the sametime, more than 20 wildfires burned in Quebec, news sources reported, andfirefighters from other Canadian provinces and the United States had beenbrought in to provide reinforcements for the areas firefighters.
(source: EarthObservatory)
