NASA’s PACE mission is studying wildfire smoke and its effects on the environment. Wildfire smoke is a major concern for the planet, and the PACE mission is helping scientists understand its impact. The PACE satellite’s three instruments are observing vegetation precursors to fires, along with plumes of smoke and their movement.
This data will help scientists piece together clues that deepen their understanding of wildfires. The challenge that scientists face is to take those clues and use them in a meaningful way, so their models of Earth properly represent what’s happening.
Understanding Wildfire Smoke
The PACE satellite observes land too, and does it really well. There is so much to explore with a new hyperspectral data set. The Ocean Color Instrument on board PACE is a hyperspectral instrument, observing the planet in several hundred different wavelengths of visible, near infrared, and ultraviolet light.
This breadth of the spectrum allows it to gather data on the health of plants, such as their state of stress, dryness, and their relative pigment balance, all of which assist in identifying high fire-risk areas. Land managers can use this data to distribute resources to help mitigate fire risk.
Monitoring Wildfire Smoke
The Ocean Color Instrument views the entire Earth daily, with more frequent coverage at high latitudes. With this frequency, on clear days, PACE scientists can quickly assess the aftermath of fires, determining the location and span of a burn scar. Areas that have been burned by wildfire often see increased flood and landslide risk.
It’s essential to identify these high-risk areas and monitor how they evolve through time. Using wavelengths in the ultraviolet range, the Ocean Color Instrument can also monitor the smoke after a fire, along with information on how high in the atmosphere these particles drift — height plays a role in how far the particles travel and the systems they impact.
Impact of Wildfire Smoke
- Wildfire smoke affects air quality
- Wildfire smoke affects the environment
- Wildfire smoke affects human health
The other two instruments on PACE, the Hyper-Angle Rainbow Polarimeter 2 and the Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration one, are rich with information about the composition of aerosols from vastly different regions. By measuring characteristics of light as it reflects off particles in the atmosphere, these two instruments can determine the quantity of these particles, along with their chemical properties, color, size, and shape.
Conclusion
Data from PACE will help scientists create more accurate wildfire models and simulate future events. We’ll be able to then look at different scenarios of emissions in the future and see how smoke that’s created in one location can impact other parts of the Earth system. The PACE mission is a significant step forward in understanding wildfire smoke and its effects on the planet.
Source: science.nasa.gov.
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