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Smoke from fires in eastern Russia is drifting into northern Japan through Mongolia, northeast China, and North Korea. The first image shows the area around Lake Baikal, the source of the fires, acquired by GLI on May 8, 2003. The red spots in the image represent thousands of original fires. The spots were obtained by extracting hot spots (over approximately 330K or approximately 57°C) observed by GLI middle infrared channel (3.7µm) and making the points red. The fire has been burning for several weeks and churning out a tremendous amount of thick smoke, which appears gray and darker than the white clouds in this image.

The second image was acquired by GLI on May 20, 2003, and we can see Sakhalin and northern Hokkaido covered with the smoke from the direction of Far East Russia in this image. Two days later, on May 22 (the bottom image), the smoke covered all of Hokkaido and reached Tohoku district.

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Earth Observation Research and application Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
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