Pine forests in Mediterranean climate zones tend to be subject to bursts of wildfires that they usually rely on to regenerate themselves, killing larger trees to make way for new generations of pines. This is especially true in the state of California where these wildfires happen regularly each year. However, due to anthropogenic climate change, the severity, frequency, and total area burnt have heavily increased year by year, leading to disastrous environmental consequences. This culminated last year in summer of 2020 when California saw its most extreme wildfires season on record, with over 41000 square kilometers of burnt land from hundreds of wildfire starts. These wildfires can be tracked through the study of carbon monoxide levels above ground coming from the incomplete combustion of shrubs, dry leaves, and wood. This translates to a greater contribution to the overall CO levels above USA mainland in summer of 2020 which we plan on studying throughout this project.
This project is based on the data of the MOPITT instrument on NASA's TERRA satellite that measures CO levels at different altitudes (pressure levels). We also used the MODIS instrument on that same satellite to collerate monoxyde presence with fire anomalies to detect active wild fires from August to October 2020.
Contributors : EnguerranVidal, Théau Ch and Javier S-A