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Elvia H. Thompson
Headquarters, Washington             April 2, 2003
(Phone 202/358-1696)

Rob Gutro
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-4044)

David Aguilar
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.
(Phone: 617/495-7462)

RELEASE: 03-128

NASA TIES EL NINO INDUCED DROUGHT TO RECORD AIR POLLUTION 
FROM FIRES

     Scientists using NASA satellite data have found the most 
intense global pollution from fires occurred during droughts 
caused by El Nino. The most intense fires took place in 1997-
1998 in association with the strongest El Nino event of the 
20th century.

Bryan Duncan, Randall Martin, Amanda Staudt, Rosemarie Yevich 
and Jennifer Logan, from Harvard University, used data 
observed by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) 
satellite to quantify the amount of smoke pollution from 
biomass burning over 20 years.

"It's important to study biomass burning, because those fires 
produce as much pollution as use of fossil fuels. Most of the 
pollution from fires is produced in the tropics, while 
pollution from fossil fuel use occurs in North America, 
Europe and Asia," Logan said. 
One of the missions of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, which 
partially funded the research, is to learn how the Earth 
system responds to natural and human-induced changes, such as 
droughts and worldwide fires caused by El Nino. NASA's 
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md, developed the 
smoke data, the unique Aerosol Index product from the TOMS 
satellite.

The Harvard scientists recently published a study in the 
Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres that describes 
how they combined the Aerosol Index data from TOMS with 
Scanning Radiometer and Sounder (ASTR) fire count data from 
the European Space Agency's European Remote Sensing-2 
satellite.

The study assessed the effects of the 1997-1998 El Nino 
events on global biomass burning. They concluded biomass 
burning around the world was unusually high during the 1997-
1998 El Nino, greater than in any other period between 1979 
and 2000. The amount of carbon monoxide emitted in 1997 and 
1998 was about 30 percent higher than the amount emitted from 
worldwide motor vehicle and fossil fuel combustion.

"We found that fires typically produce the most pollution in 
Southeast Asia in March, in northern Africa in January and 
February, and in southern Africa and Brazil in August and 
September," Logan said. During the El Nino of 1997-1998, 
Indonesia, Mexico, and Central America experienced extreme 
droughts, and forest fires raged out of control.

The smoke from the fires in Mexico and Central America was 
blown northward in May 1998, worsening air-quality and 
reducing visibility over much of the eastern United States. 
The fires in Indonesia burned tropical forests over an area 
equivalent to the size of southern New England and released 
enormous amounts of pollutants. The team estimated the 
Indonesian fires produced about 170 million metric tons of 
carbon monoxide, which equals about one-third of the carbon 
monoxide annually released from fossil fuels.

Biomass burning is the combustion of both living and dead 
vegetation. It includes fires generated both by lightning and 
human activity. Humans are responsible for about 90 percent 
of biomass burning, with only a small percentage of natural 
fires contributing to the total amount of vegetation burned.

For more information about the study and images on the 
Internet, visit:

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0328drought.html

To see the TOMS satellite Web site, visit:

http://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/

For more information about El Nino events on the Internet, 
visit:

http://www.elNino.noaa.gov/edu.html

For more information about NASA and Earth Science programs on 
the Internet, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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