During the 2003 fire season, blazes in the taiga forests of Eastern
Siberia were part of a vast network of fires across Siberia and the
Russian Far East, northeast China and northern Mongolia. Fires in
Eastern Siberia have been increasing in recent years, and the 2003
spring and summer seasons are the most extensive recorded in over 100
years. Overall, the Russian Federation experienced a record-setting fire
year, with over 55 million acres burnt by early August, according to the
Global Fire Monitoring Center
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/GFMCnew/2003/0808/20030808_ru.htm. These
data products from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR)
illustrate the extent and height of smoke from numerous fires in the
Lake Baikal region on June 11, 2003.
The left and center panels are natural-color views from MISR's
vertical-viewing (nadir) and 70-degree forward-viewing cameras,
respectively. The steeply-looking camera enhances the appearance of
smoke, such that many areas, including Lake Baikal (the long dark water
body along the left-hand image edge), are almost completely obscured by
smoke at the oblique view angle. The image area includes part of the
Russian states of Irkutsk, Buryatia, and Chita, as well as northern
Mongolia, with these areas stretching from upper-left to bottom-right,
respectively.
On the right is a map of stereoscopically retrieved heights for features
exhibiting sufficient spatial contrast. The heights correspond to
elevations above sea level. Taking into account the surface elevation,
the smoke plumes range from about 2-5 kilometers above the surface.
Larger heights are mostly associated with clouds. Areas where heights
could not be retrieved are shown as dark gray.
Fire is an important ecological factor in the taiga forests, but in this
region a combination of dry conditions and increased human exploitation
during recent decades can increase the frequency and extent of fires and
alter the historical fire regime. It is important to consider the
effects of changing fire regimes from a climatological point of view,
since the complex interactions between aerosols (tiny airborne
particles), clouds, surfaces and the hydrological cycle are the main
source of uncertainty in global climate models.
The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth
continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees
north and 82 degrees south latitude. This data product was generated
from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 18506. The
panels cover an area of about 400 kilometers x 1600 kilometers, and
utilize data from blocks 41 to 54 within World Reference System-2 path 130.
MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The
Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology.
Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team.
Text acknowledgment: Clare Averill (Raytheon / Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
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