Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) observations of biomass burning products in the stratosphere from Canadian forest fires in August 2017

Pumphrey, Hugh C.; Schwartz, Michael J.; Santee, Michelle L.; Kablick III, George P.; Fromm, Michael D.; Livesey, Nathaniel J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-16645-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-16645-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-16645-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 22

Research article

|

15 Nov 2021

Research article |

| 15 Nov 2021

Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) observations of biomass burning products in the stratosphere from Canadian forest fires in August 2017

Hugh C. Pumphrey, Michael J. Schwartz, Michelle L. Santee, George P. Kablick III, Michael D. Fromm, and Nathaniel J. Livesey

Data sets

MLS/Aura Level 2 Water Vapor (H2O) Mixing Ratio V004, A. Lambert, W. Read, and N. Livesey https://doi.org/10.5067/Aura/MLS/DATA2009

NCEP FNL Operational Model Global Tropospheric Analyses, continuing from July 1999 National Centers for Environmental Prediction https://doi.org/10.5065/D6M043C6

Short summary

Forest fires in British Columbia in August 2017 caused an unusual phenomonon: smoke and gases from the fires rose quickly to a height of 10 km. From there, the pollution continued to rise more slowly for many weeks, travelling around the world as it did so. In this paper, we describe how we used data from a satellite instrument to observe this polluted volume of air. The satellite has now been working for 16 years but has observed only three events of this type.