The use of AVHRR data to determine the concentration of visible and invisible tropospheric pollutants originating from a 1997 forest fire in Southeast Asia

Abstract

A massive forest fire in Indonesia in 1997 affected the whole Asian region by producing a large smoke plume, with Malaysia bearing the brunt due to the wind direction and weather conditions and because of its proximity to the source. The five primary fire produced pollutants were carbon monoxide (CO), sulphur dioxide (SO[2]), nitrogen dioxide (NO[2]), ozone (O[3]) and particulate matter less than 10 μm (PM10). The first four of these are, of course, invisible to conventional satellite-flown multispectral scanners operating in the visible and near infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The fifth, PM10, is present in the haze and therefore makes an observable contribution to the signal received by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). The haze in AVHRR channels 1 and 2 data for the fires of September 1997 has been used to study the concentration of PM10 directly. It has also been used to study the concentration indirectly-as a tracer or surrogate-for the four remaining materials, the gases CO, SO[2], NO[2] and O[3]. Data from ground observations have been used to calibrate the results and the distributions of the fire pollutants over Peninsular Malaysia have been plotted.