Particulate matter, dust storm and possibly a wildfire

There were many things occurring on Wednesday 10 April 2013.

PM10 was over the health limit in Reykjavik, small dust storm in the south, and possibly also a wildfire. Let’s take a closer look

PM10 was over the limit in Reykjavik, at the station Grensás.

The 24-h average was ~58.6 µg/m³, but the health limit is 50 µg/m³. Wind speed was less than 5 m/s and, even though NO_x isn’t very high, this is most likely connected to traffic.

It was possible to detect a small dust storm, most likely, on a MODIS image, Terra satellite.

(Image courtesy of NASA/Rapidfire)

Then there was a satellite detection of a thermal anomaly, a wildfire. These can be false, and I haven’t seen anything in the news to verify this – if you know whether there was a fire or not, please let me know. This was around 14:00 on 10 April 2013, the location is shown on the figure below.

Map from ja.is.

On a satellite image, taken at 14:00, it is possible to detect what might be smoke from a wildfire ?

Image courtesy of NASA/Rapidfire.