Carbon Monoxide And Agricultural Burning

Thought you might like a picture of what is really a big problem for planet Earth, agricultural burning. Modern farming methods do not require this practice, but you do need to use modern farming methods and not third world subsistence farming methods -- And those methods require a modern economy to support. See the problem?

Maybe we should give the dirt poor countries power plants instead of bags of food. The age old teach analogy. Electricity generation is the enabler of modern society and lifestyle.


Forest fires and agricultural burning create large amounts of carbon monoxide. AIRS provides daily global maps of carbon monoxide from space, allowing scientists to follow the global transport of this gas day-to-day. In this image, carbon monoxide pollution from agricultural burning blooms repeatedly over the Amazonian basin. The gas is then transported across the Atlantic Ocean. Carbon monoxide pollution from fires in sub-Saharan Africa is also apparent.

Images and caption courtesy of the AIRS Science Team at NASA/JPL. AIRS is a science package aboard the AQUA satellite.