NewsThe forest fires in Australia from 2019 to 2020

The forest fires have occurred in Australia from September 2019 to February 2020. Forest fires often occur in Australia due to intense heat, drying, strong wind, and lightning.
Figure 1 shows the fire smoke that can be seen clearly in the east coast of Australia observed by GOSAT-2/TANSO-CAI-2 on December 7th, 2019. The markers indicate the CO2 and CO column density observed by GOSAT-2/TANSO-FTS-2.
GOSAT-2/TANSO-FTS-2 observes both solar reflected light in short wave infrared (SWIR) and thermal radiation from the atmosphere in thermal infrared (TIR) at the same time. By using of both SWIR and TIR bands, FTS-2 can retrieve CO2 partial-column density in upper troposphere (4-12 km) and lower troposphere (0-4 km).
The markers in the left figure (a) shows the CO2 partial-column density in the upper and lower troposphere and the right figure (b) shows the CO total column density.
FTS-2 detected enhanced CO2 in the lower troposphere near the burned area and high CO column density (0.27 ppb) at almost same area.
GOSAT/GOSAT-2 partial column of CO2 and CH4 and GOSAT total column of CO data are available from the following sites.
GOSAT/GOSAT-2 EORC Daily Partial Column GHGs

※The TANSO-CAI-2 image was composed of band2 (443nm) in red, band3 (674nm) in green and band1 (343nm) in blue.

Figure 1. GOSAT-2 TANSO-CAI-2 Image, TANSO-FTS-2 CO2 (a) and CO (b) column density around east coast of Australia.