NASA Uses Science and Technology to Display Awesome Weather Images

September 28, 2020 Climate Environment Physical Geography

By late September, 2020, NASA had built some remarkable images (using the latest remote sensing technologies) displaying how our biomass in California was burning into the atmosphere. They show West Coast smoke plumes as they were steered by surrounding pressure and wind systems and transported east. We must share these colorful images from that three day period, marking the end of our record heat and wind storms during the middle of September. Though we just attached this mini story to the bottom of our much longer previous story on the record heat, wind, and wildfires, it deserves a temporary shout out and spotlight here.

NASA Remote Sensing Magic. Scan across these satellite images in chronological order from top to bottom. Watch the high pressure system over the southwest states as it gradually begins to weaken and shift south. Notice how the upper level low pressure system (spinning counterclockwise) intensifies off the Pacific Northwest Coast and begins to move onshore. This will bring quenching showers into Oregon and down to the northern edge of California during the following days. Follow the West Coast smoke plumes as they are eventually caught between these two systems and carried into the upper level prevailing westerlies, transported across the continent, and finally steered over the North Atlantic Ocean. These same westerlies and the jet stream should gradually sag south as winter approaches, ushering in Pacific storms that should finally end this year’s fire season. Note how the meandering tropical systems interact with the smoke plumes that are drifting eastward.
(A host of satellite imagery technologies were used to build these images. Black carbon from the west coast fires data comes from the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which assimilates information from satellite, aircraft, and ground-based observing systems.)
Source: “NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC and VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.”

Now, we encourage you to go back to our previous and more lengthy story that covers the weather systems and fires of August and September, 2020 in more detail.

William Selby

William Selby is a native Californian who has explored, researched, and worked in every corner of the Golden State. William has accumulated over 3 decades of experience teaching Geography and Earth Science at Santa Monica College. Since retiring from teaching, his lifelong love and extensive knowledge of the Golden State is reflected in the book as well as in his continued service to academia, geography and the State of California.

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