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Where there’s fire,

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there’s smoke.

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But smoke can also travel far beyond a burning fire. It blows across continents and oceans,

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altering air quality and affecting weather patterns.

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What happens when that smoke mixes with the atmosphere — where it goes,

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what exactly it carries, and how it affects people and ecosystems — is important

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and ongoing research. Enter NASA, NOAA

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and university partners, working from airplanes, mobile research laboratories

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and ground stations to follow particles of smoke produced by fires

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across the United States. The mission? It’s called

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the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality,

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or FIREEx-AQ, for short.

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Generally, the goal is to track smoke as it crosses North America, taking air samples

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ranging from high in the sky to down on the ground where people are breathing it.

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These measurements will help answer some big questions, like:

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What’s in the smoke? How do fires affect air quality across North America?

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What are some of the long-term affects of smoke from

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these fires? And importantly, how can satellites help us

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answer these questions? There are a few stops along the way.

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First up: Boise, Idaho. From Boise,

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the FIREEx-AQ team will deploy throughout the U.S., taking measurements

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of smoke from wildfires.

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Next up, the team heads to Salina, Kansas, to focus on smoke from agricultural fires,

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looking at the unique composition of chemicals in these small, managed burns.

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Finally, all this data comes back to the lab

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where researchers put it into computer models, improving forecasts of where smoke

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travels, and what it carries, as fires burn across North America.

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FIREEx-AQ is just one of NASA’s many

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missions studying fires and how they’re changing with our planet.

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From the ground, the air and space, we’re keeping a close eye on Earth

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and how it burns.

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EXPLORE EARTH

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NASA

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