GMAO South American Wild Fires

  • Released Monday, November 18, 2024
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GMAO South American Wild Fires

South American Wildfires and Column CO Biomass Burning

Aerosols and trace gases emitted from wildfires are an important component of the Earth-atmosphere system. They can impact radiation, clouds, the carbon cycle, and human health. Produced by the GMAO using observations from MODIS, the Quick Fire Emissions Dataset (QFED) serves as a top-down estimate of aerosol and trace gas emissions.

This animation uses the GEOS Forward Processing (FP) system to demonstrate the transport of total column CO that originated due to biomass burning over South America in August 2024. Though emissions are localized, as shown by the red triangles indicating fire hotspots, CO from biomass burning is transported thousands of miles and can have a widespread impact.



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Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Release date

This page was originally published on Monday, November 18, 2024.
This page was last updated on Friday, January 3, 2025 at 2:42 PM EST.