Abstract At the end of May 2025, extremely strong wildfires in Canada produced several pyrocumulonimbus clouds lifting the smoke particles up to the lower stratosphere. Stratospheric aerosol optical depths of more than 2.5 were observed by the ATmospheric LiDAR (ATLID) onboard of the Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) satellite. ATLID observations showed that the smoke layer top ascended from 13.6 km over Canada to 17.4 km over Europe. The enhanced depolarization ratio of 0.24 ± $\pm $ 0.02 stayed constant during transport and indicated non‐spherical smoke particles. ATLID is the first space lidar that is able to measure the extinction‐to‐backscatter ratio (lidar ratio) at 355 nm. A decrease of the lidar ratio with increasing transport time was observed from values of 68 ± $\pm $ 5 to 49 ± $\pm $ 5 sr. EarthCARE observed the substantial downmixing of the stratospheric smoke into the troposphere at tropopause folds over the Mediterranean revealing an important removal process of stratospheric smoke.
Observations from the Little Bunker
Last updated: April 07, 2026 02:59 PM
Atmospheric CO₂
431.7 ppm
+18.3
ppm/year
Atmospheric CH₄
1945.85 ppb
+8.44
ppb/year
Global Temperature
+1.48 °C
Peak: +1.73°C
World Population
8.1 billion
+67
million/year