Case study of the 2008 Northern California wildfires and their effect on local air quality

During June-August 2008 a string of wildfires hit Northern and Central California. The fires burned over 800,00 acres burned over the time period. There were several special observations made by the NASA/JPL Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) in coordination with the ARCTAS-CA aircraft campaign. We will use data from TES and other satellite instruments as well as data from instruments on the NASA DC-8 aircraft, ozonesondes observations and results from the NOAA/NESDIS Realtime Air Quality Modeling System (RAQMS) chemical transport model to study the evolution of the smoke plumes from these fires and try to quantify how the fires may have affected local air quality, particularly in terms of ozone pollution. Back trajectories will be used to estimate the influences on the air observed both by the satellite measurements and ground based observations and determine the amount and location of ozone production from the fires.