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Among the atmospheric emission sources, wildfires are episodic events characterized by large spatial and temporal variability. Therefore, accurate information on gaseous and aerosol emissions from fires for specific regions and seasons is critical for air quality forecasts. The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) in geostationary orbit provides fire observations over Africa and the Mediterranean with a temporal resolution of 15 min. It thus resolves the complete fire life cycle and captures the fires' peak intensities, which is not possible in Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) fire emission inventories like the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS). We evaluate two different operational fire radiative power (FRP) products derived from SEVIRI, by studying a large forest fire in Antalya, Turkey, in July-August 2008. The EUMETSAT Land Surface Analysis Satellite Applications Facility (LSA SAF) has higher FRP values during the fire episode than the Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA). It is also in better agreement with the co-located, gridded MODIS FRP. Both products miss small fires that frequently occur in the region and are detected by MODIS. Emissions are derived from the FRP products. They are used along-side GFAS emissions in smoke plume simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. In comparisons with MODIS aerosol optical thickness (AOT) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), CO and NH3 observations show that including the diurnal variability of fire emissions improves the spatial distribution and peak concentrations of the simulated smoke plumes associated with this large fire. They also show a large discrepancy between the currently available operational FRP products, with the LSA SAF being the most appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the atmospheric emission sources, wildfires are episodic events characterized by large spatial and temporal variability. Therefore, accurate information on fire gaseous and aerosol emissions for specific regions and seasons is critical for air quality forecasts. The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) in geostationary orbit provides fire observations over Africa and the Mediterranean with a unique temporal resolution of 15 min. It thus resolves the complete fire life cycle and captures the fires' peak intensities, which is not possible in MODIS-based fire emission inventories like GFAS. We evaluate two different operational Fire Radiative Power (FRP) products derived from SEVIRI, by studying the case of a large forest fire in Antalya, Turkey, in July-August 2008. The EUMETSAT LSA SAF product has higher FRP values during the fire episode than the WF_ABBA product. It is also in better agreement with the colocated, gridded MODIS FRP. Both products miss small fires that frequently occur in the region and are detected by MODIS. Emissions are derived from the FRP products. They are used along-side GFAS emissions in smoke plume simulations with WRF and the Community Multiscale Air Quality model (CMAQ). Comparisons with MODIS AOT and IASI CO and NH3 observations show that including the diurnal variability of fire emissions improves the spatial distribution and peak concentrations of the simulated smoke plumes associated to the large fire. They also show a large discrepancy between the currently available operational FRP products, with the LSA SAF one being the most appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a study which uses a simple algorithm to detect for multiple cloud layers. It applies the algorithm to coincident passive sensors and examines the differences between multi-layer and vertically-extended clouds. Findings reveal that there is seasonal variations in the spatial distribution of the cloud types.