Large plumes of smoke rising from devastating wildfires burning near
Los Angeles and San Diego on Sunday, October 26, 2003, are
highlighted in this set of images from the Multi-angle Imaging
SpectroRadiometer (MISR). These images include a natural color view
from MISR's nadir camera (left) and an automated stereo height
retrieval (right). The tops of the smoke plumes range in altitude
from 500 - 3000 meters, and the stereo retrieval clearly
differentiates the smoke from patches of high-altitude cirrus. Plumes
are apparent from fires burning near the California-Mexico border,
San Diego, Camp Pendleton, the foothills of the San Bernardino
Mountains, and in and around Simi Valley. The majority of the smoke
is coming from the fires near San Diego and the San Bernardino
Mountains.
The Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth
continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82°
north and 82° south latitude. These data products were generated from
a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 20510. The
panels cover an area of 329 kilometers x 543 kilometers, and utilize
data from blocks 62 to 66 within World Reference System-2 path 40.
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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