May 9, 2023 - Wildfires in Western Canada

Wildfires
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More than 100 wildland fires raged across Western Canada in early May
2023, forcing an estimated 30,000 people in Alberta and British
Columbia to evacuate. The fires destroyed homes and produced chimneys
of smoke that reached into the upper troposphere.

The extensive and dangerous fires moving across Canada’s richest oil
region also forced shutdowns of several oil production facilities. As
of May 8, energy producers were estimated to be holding back an
estimated 280,000 barrels of oil equivalent each day, or roughly 3
percent of the country’s output.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board
NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of smoke billowing
from fires in the two Canadian provinces on May 7, 2023, the day after
officials in Alberta declared a provincial state of emergency. A large
cluster of red hot spots, each marking actively burning fire, can be
seen in Alberta, despite heavy cloud cover. Massive thick smoke covers
British Columbia and blows northwest over parts of Yukon and the
Northwest Territories. The Great Slave Lake, located in Northwest
Territories, remains covered in ice.

As of the evening of May 8, there were 88 fires burning in Alberta,
with 29 remaining out of control in Alberta, according to the Alberta
Wildfire Status Dashboard. Fourteen of these fires were listed as
“Fires of Note”, which is defined as a fire determined to be of
significant public interest and which may pose a threat to public
safety, communities, or critical infrastructure. On that same day, four
fires were burning out of control in British Columbia, near its border
with Alberta.

The fires in Alberta have been so intense they have produced towering
chimneys of smoke. Using remote sensing, researchers at the Cooperative
Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, observed the formation of a pyrocumulonimbus
(pyroCb) cloud billowing from a wildfire west of Edmonton on May 4.
Temperatures at the top of the cloud were estimated to have reached
-61°C (-78°F), which indicates that the smoke may have reached an
altitude of about 12 kilometers (39,000 feet). That would put the top
of the pyroCb cloud into the tropopause—the boundary between the
troposphere and the stratosphere.

Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 5/7/2023
Resolutions: 1km (824.1 KB), 500m (2.6 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=2023-05-09

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