Tracking Africa’s Inferno

This article focuses on instruments aboard an orbiting satellite and high-flying aircraft study grass fires that straddle a continent. NASA designed its $1.3 billion Terra to be the flagship in a new series of Earth-observing satellites that will study phenomena affecting the climate. The instruments carried by Terra that were most active during the Safari 2000 field experiment were Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MODIS), Multi-Angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR), and Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT). MOPITT accomplishes its mission by using gas correlation spectroscopy to measure rising and reflected infrared radiance in three absorption bands of carbon monoxide and methane. The Terra’s Safari 2000 observations were augmented by measurements taken by instruments aboard several aircraft, including the high-altitude Lockheed-Martin ER-2 that NASA flew from Pietersburg, South Africa, as part of the African field experiment. The South African Weather Bureau contributed two Aerocommander 690A aircraft to Safari 2000. One of the twin-engine, turboprop planes was used for aerosol research, while the other one helped validate the carbon monoxide measurements obtained by MOPITT.