4
January 2020
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC
ENGINEERING &
REMOTE SENSING
J
ournal
S
taff
Publisher ASPRS
Editor-In-Chief Alper Yilmaz
Assistant Editor Jie Shan
Assistant Director — Publications Rae Kelley
Electronic Publications Manager/Graphic Artist
Matthew Austin
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
is the official journal
of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. It is
devoted to the exchange of ideas and information about the applications of
photogrammetry, remote sensing, and geographic information systems. The
technical activities of the Society are conducted through the following Technical
Divisions: Geographic Information Systems, Photogrammetric Applications,
Lidar, Primary Data Acquisition, Professional Practice, and Remote Sensing
Applications. Additional information on the functioning of the Technical
Divisions and the Society can be found in the Yearbook issue of
PE&RS.
Correspondence relating to all business and editorial matters pertaining
to this and other Society publications should be directed to the American
Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 425 Barlow Place, Suite
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PE&RS.
PE&RS
(ISSN0099-1112) is published monthly by the American
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COPYRIGHT 2020.
Copyright by the American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing. Reproduction of this issue or any part thereof (except
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Three weeks into November 2019, springtime bush fires continued to blaze across
southern and eastern Australian states. As of November 20, government agencies
counted 45 fires in South Australia and 49 in New South Wales, and dangerously dry
and windy weather was fanning flames in Victoria and Queensland.
The fires have sent smoke rising high into the atmosphere and half-way around the
world, with satellites detecting aerosols and other smoky pollutants crossing the
Pacific and moving over the South Atlantic Ocean. Locally, the smoke has blanketed
the Sydney metropolitan area, significantly degrading air quality.
On November 19, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a natural-color image (cover image) of thick smoke
plumes rising from New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland.
According to researchers, the smoke plumes from the Australian fires have risen as
high as 12 to 13 kilometers (7 to 8 miles) in the atmosphere. That is unusually high for
wildfires. “This event is interesting because we still don’t have a confirmed pyrocumu-
lonimbus cloud to explain the lofting,” said Mike Fromm, a fire researcher at the U.S.
Naval Research Laboratory. “In spite of this being a well-observed plume event, it is
still not clear how so much smoke got so high so fast.”
As wildfires consume wood, vegetation, homes, and other materials, they emit many
gases and particles, including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons, nitro-
gen oxides, organic carbon, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Black carbon is a type
of aerosol that is especially harmful to humans and animals because the particles are
small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream.
When such pollutants rise high into the atmosphere, their effects can spread across
oceans and continents and can linger for weeks to months. Beyond health effects
on the ground, black carbon and other debris can darken snow and ice, accelerating
melting. In the atmosphere, the particles and gases can absorb or block sunlight, af-
fect cloud formation, and increase or reduce rainfall. When lofted in great quantities,
smoke plumes might have an impact on climate.
“Events like these are like natural experiments to study atmospheric air mass move-
ments,” said Santiago Gasso of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Like a volcanic
eruption, there is so much material in these smoke plumes that you can track the air
for thousands of kilometers. It is like releasing a tracer and following where it goes
over the South Pacific, an area that is notoriously under-observed.”
Occasionally, smoke even causes odd problems for pilots. “Dense smoke far from its
source can create problems, especially if it is encountered without knowing what it
is,” said Fromm. “For instance, airliners have occasionally made emergency landings
because smoke outside was detected inside the aircraft.”
At 12:25 Universal Time (11:25 p.m. local time) on November 17, the Operational Land
Imager on Landsat 8 acquired this nighttime image of fires raging near Port Macqua-
rie, New South Wales. The image, pictured above, was made from a combination of
shortwave and near-infrared data (bands 7-6-5) to reveal hot spots through the smoke
and clouds. The infrared data is overlaid on a base map created with imagery from
before the fires began.
For more information and to view the animation that depicts the abundance and
direction of black carbon blowing through the atmosphere from November 1-18, visit
.
NASA Earth Observatory images and video by Joshua Stevens, using GEOS-5 data
from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC, MODIS data from
NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview, and Landsat data from the U.S. Geologi-
cal Survey. Story by Michael Carlowicz and Adam Voiland.
— Infrared signature
Port Macquarie
