During the dry-season in southern Africa, large areas of grasslands burn each year, but this year's burning season was extremely large. SAFARI 2000 field campaign scientists studied the extent of these fires and the impact of the rising smoke on air pollution, climate change, and clouds.

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One of the goals of the SAFARI 2000 field campaign was to distinguish industrial emissions from other sources of air pollution, such as the smoke from the extensive grassland fires in southern Africa.

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NASA's ER-2 high altitude aircraft (foreground) observed the southern African haze layer from 60,000 feet while the University of Washington's Convair-580 aircraft (background) used scientific instruments to directly sample the haze. The planes are shown at the base of flight operations for the SAFARI 2000 dry-season campaign in Pietersburg, South Africa.

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ER-2 pilot Ken Broda prepares for a flight from Pietersburg airport, South Africa. The high-altitude aircraft carried several remote-sensing instruments similar to those on NASA's Terra spacecraft.

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Instruments onboard the University of Washington's Convair-580 research aircraft sampled the smoke plumes produced by the unprecedented fire season this year in southern Africa.

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Continuous observations of an African savannah ecosystem are being made from a NASA-funded research tower in Kruger National Park (South Africa). The ground-based data are combined with observations from aircraft and satellite to give a complete picture of the region's ecosystems and their role in climate change.

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High levels of ozone, a component of smog, were produced by the fires in southern Africa. Ozone from the inland fires concentrates and flows east to the Indian Ocean and west over the Atlantic. The ozone levels were frequently similar to those found in air pollution alerts in major U.S. cities. This data was also acquired by Earth Probe TOMS in September 2000.This is a still from the movie clip showing ozone levels over southern Africa on Sept. 25, 2000.

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Multiple fires are burning across the southern part of the African continent in September 2000, as shown by data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on board the NOAA-14 satellite. The unprecedented amount of fires generated large amounts of aerosols (overlaid on top), which were observed with the Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument. The still image is from this movie clip showing fires and resulting aerosols over southern Africa.

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On August 20, 2000, a prescribed burn was set in the Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa near the border of Botswana. The fire was observed by the MODIS airborne simulator aboard NASA's ER-2 aircraft. The region is shown first in visible light, with smoke plumes. The simulator then peers through the smoke to view the fires. The burn was timed to coincide with the overpass of NASA's Terra spacecraft.  The first still is from the next animation showing the MODIS airborne simulator view of the rising smoke plume from the Madikwe prescribed burn. (A cloud and shadow appears at the upper edge of this image.)  The second still, also from the animation, shows the MODIS airborne simulator view of the Madikwe fire and burn scar through the smoke.

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Scientists around the world are studying the complex role of airborne particles called aerosols on climate.

The first image shows that aerosols produced by biomass burning and other types of emissions that were sampled during the SAFARI 2000 campaign were more heat-absorbing than expected. Thus, the haze layer may have a significant warming influence on the region's atmosphere.

The second image shows that aerosols are usually thought to reflect sunlight back into space, thereby cooling the atmosphere.

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