16 August 2018

Smoke From Western Wildfires Reaches Europe

Posted by Dan Satterfield

Some stunning images from the GOES-16 this afternoon. The western U.S. wildfire smoke is now visible over much of Canada and into the northeastern U.S. It’s also clearly visible all the way across the Atlantic to the coast of Portugal! Look at the imagery below:

Smoke is giving the sky a hazy look over much of the Northeast U.S. today.

Another view courtesy of CIRA at Colorado State:

Click on the images for a much larger version.

Now, look at the smoke across the Atlantic. That land at the right edge of the image is Portugal.

Here is a view from Europe’s Meteosat. You can see dust coming off of the Sahara but off the coast of Portugal, the wildfire smoke is visible. Ice crystal clouds are tinted cyan in this natural colour image. Smoke is bluish but dust is pink. This type of imagery makes it easy to distinguish between low clouds, snow, and high thin clouds made of ice, and forecasters like me use it daily.

On a related note:
   July 2018 was the third hottest on record globally, just behind, 2016 and 2017. In addition, January-July was the third hottest period on record. (NASA-GISS)

Some updated news about that (and our changing climate) over the weekend.