February 28, 2021 - Fire and Smoke in India

    Follow @NASA_MODIS

   Fire and Smoke in India
    Tweet
    Share

   Winter haze continued to blanket northern India in late February 2021.
   A regular visitor in winter, haze piles up along the southern front of
   the Himalaya Mountains and pours across the Indian Ocean. On February
   24, 2021, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
   (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of
   the region, the haze was so thick that it obscured the ground from
   view.

   Wintertime temperature inversions contribute to the build up of haze.
   Inversions occur when cold air gets trapped under a layer of warm air.
   Usually, air high in the atmosphere is cooler than air near Earth’s
   surface. Warmer air near the surface rises, allowing pollutants from
   the surface to disperse in the atmosphere. During the winter, cold air
   often moves down the Himalaya Mountains, settling over northern India’s
   Ganges Plain. This layer of cold air gets trapped beneath a layer of
   warmer air. Since the cold air cannot rise above the warm air,
   pollution builds in the cold air as long as the temperature inversion
   lasts.

   Image Facts
   Satellite:  Aqua
   Date Acquired: 2/24/2021
   Resolutions:  1km (286.6 KB),  500m (1000.9 KB),  250m (3.2
   MB)
   Bands Used: 1,4,3
   Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-02-28
 
