Even as Muscovites choked under a blanket of thick smoke in the first week of August 2010, concentrations of a colorless, odorless gas spiked to dangerous levels. A product of fire and a component of smoke, carbon monoxide is among the pollutants that wildfires spread across much of western Russia. This image, made with data from the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) sensor flying on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows carbon monoxide over western Russia between August 1 and August 8, 2010.
The highest levels of carbon monoxide are shown in red, while lower levels are yellow and orange. Western Russia, including Moscow, sits under a broad area of elevated carbon monoxide. Areas where the sensor did not collect data during the period—probably because of clouds—are gray.
MOPITT measures carbon monoxide in the atmosphere between two and eight kilometers above Earth’s surface. The image shows the composite of those measurements, not carbon monoxide levels near the ground. However, ground measurements of carbon monoxide during the period reached more than six times higher than acceptable levels in Moscow, said news reports.
CNN just said it was just like smoking 2 packs of cogs
Every 2 hours in the dark areas on the map!
Whew!!
CNN said?
LOL
800 ppm is lethal over a 2 hour period.
The scale appears to be in parts per billion. They are near 0.25 ppm in places which is less than the level of CO normally found within a home (50ppm is the maximum allowed in a working environment).
0.1 ppm is normal atmospheric level but strangely this is marked as orange with surrounding unmapped areas in grey – someone is trying to make normal conditions appear abnormal.
Obama could learn a thing or two from Putin. I mean, Putin flew over some flames at a very high altitude, dumped a load of water on the fire and then fucked off home, an hero of the Russian people.
In the Gulf, Obama could have raced out over the gushing oil well in a Cigarette boat, dumped a load of poisonous crap on the oil and then gone home to Washington, an hero of the Democrats, anyway.
And, if one consumes alcohol during periods of carbon monoxide exposure its detrimental effects are enhanced.
I predict massive population die-off in Moscow.
Fisheye
Some of the ancient great Australian bush fires wiped out the entire continent’s trees, raging on for centuries. There is a charcoal layer in sediment covering most of the country, all laid down at the same time. Point I am making is that this is a natural phenomenon.
Is this all from wild fires or set fires or a mix? How much actually got burned over? Some regions shown in orange are rather barren and some are tundra and taiga while some are seas. What is burning? Forests, grassland, farmland? Where are the fires actually located?
Rocks and fairly widely scattered plant cover aren’t going to support a fire and neither are seas.
I don’t think the actual numbers are as extreme as someone wants them to appear nor are the fires as wide spread as this is trying to make it look.
This could seriously effect tobacco sales in Russia. Everyone is getting two packs a day, for free! Whether they want to smoke or not. All they need now is some Vodka factories to overflow.
Not too long ago, it was volcanic ash that was a huge problem for most of Europe. Did that all magically go away? Now Russia has this problem, because they probably won’t spend the money to put the damn fires out. At least not before it got way out of hand. GW and the US shouldn’t be blamed for all this. The US didn’t cause Chernobyl to meltdown and contaminate the countryside, either. Russia has a bad environmental record, going back decades.
Never Fear! Uncle Al is on his way!
Well, there go my vacation plans.