NASA Ties El Nino Induced Drought to Record Air Pollution from Fires

	This graph shows the distribution of mean carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from biomass burning. The light blue indicates the smallest number of CO emissions, while the orange and red indicate the largest (and most likely the largest concentration of fires and/or the most intense number of fires). CREDIT: Harvard University

Scientists using NASA satellite data have found the most intense global pollution from fires occurred during droughts caused by El Nino. The most intense fires took place in 1997-1998 in association with the strongest El Nino event of the 20th century.

Bryan Duncan, Randall Martin, Amanda Staudt, Rosemarie Yevich and Jennifer Logan, from Harvard University, used data observed by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite to quantify the amount of smoke pollution from biomass burning over 20 years.

"It's important to study biomass burning, because those fires produce as much pollution as use of fossil fuels. Most of the pollution from fires is produced in the tropics, while pollution from fossil fuel use occurs in North America, Europe and Asia," Logan said. One of the missions of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, which partially funded the research, is to learn how the Earth system responds to natural and human-induced changes, such as droughts and worldwide fires caused by El Nino. Goddard developed the smoke data, the unique Aerosol Index product from the TOMS satellite.

For the complete article on fire pollution, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0328drought.html