Aeolus new special settings

"Starting today, Aeolus will be measuring stratospheric aerosol layers caused by the recent Australian bushfires using new special vertical range bin settings. It will be the first time aerosol particles and Mie winds will be measured by Aeolus from an altitude of up to 29 km", ESA announced today in a twitter thread on Aeolus' official account.

Australian bushfires' smoke detected in Chile

ESA also gives us more insight about the global impact of the Australian wildfires, with smoke detected by station in Chile as an example.

Smoke from the bushfires traveled around the globe and was detected by the Aeolus Cal/Val station at Punta Arenas in Chile. The new measurement will allow experts to determine the speed of the smoke plume and assess Aeolus’ capacity to measure aerosol in high altitudes.

https://www.windy.com/-Active-fires-fires?fires,2020021600,-26.667,128.452,5,internal

The local impacts of the Australian bushfires have been devastating to property and life in Australia while producing extreme air quality impacts throughout the region.

As smoke from the massive fires has interacted with the global weather, the transport of smoke plumes around the global have accelerated through deep vertical transport into the upper troposphere and even the lowermost stratosphere, leading to long-range transport around the globe.

The smoke from these bushfires will travel across the Southern Ocean completing a global circumnavigation back around to Australia and is particularly pronounced across the southern Pacific Ocean out to South America.

https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,-35.568,130.869,4,internal

With the raging wildfires, widespread air quality issues, caused by very high surface particulate matter values, will affect many people over the coming days, latest Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service forecasts reveal.

As significant numbers of bushfires burn in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), monitors their intensity and emissions. Data collected by CAMS shows that the fires are unprecedented when compared to the previous 16 years for New South Wales.

CAMS, which is implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Union, provides daily estimates of global fire emissions with its Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS), which assimilates fire radiative power (FRP) observations from satellite-based sensors.

Recent satellite imagery shows massive smoke plumes over New South Wales and Queensland, turning day into night in some areas. The fires have even been burning in the kind of intensity never experienced before in places usually not seriously affected such as Northern New South Wales and tropical Queensland and according to scientists. Smoke from the fires has been transported beyond New Zealand and over the South Pacific Ocean with satellite observations showing that it may reach South America in coming days.

The monthly hydrological summaries of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), also implemented by ECMWF, showed August, September and October anomalies with high positive resp. dry values for eastern Australia, that are consistent with long-term drought conditions and are contributing to the current fire conditions. Most of the extratropical Southern Hemisphere, particularly in Australia and the southern part of Africa are currently experiencing drier than usual conditions.

Very high surface atmospheric particulate matter has also been causing air quality issues with New South Wales declaring a state of emergency in the wake of fires.

Fires, not only in Australia, but worldwide, can now be tracked by users of the App, Windy, which has added a new map “Active fires”. Input for the new layer is provided by the Copernicus Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) and displays the daily average of the fire radiative power (FRP).

CAMS Senior Scientist, Mark Parrington, comments: “We have been closely monitoring the intensity of the fires and the smoke they emit and when comparing the results with the average from a 17-year period, they are very unusual in number and intensity, especially in New South Wales, for being so early in the fire season.”

For further information visit atmosphere.copernicus.eu/global-fire-emissions

https://www.windy.com/-PM2-5-pm2p5?cams,pm2p5,-32.584,150.073,5,internal