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Abstract
High frequency of agricultural fires is observed every year during the summer months (mainly in August) over Western Russia and Eastern Europe. In this study we document on the spatial and vertical distribution of smoke during the biomass burning seasons between 2006-2008 over Eastern Europe, as seen by CALIPSO, OMI, ATSR, and MODIS. The vertical distributions of the smoke plumes generated by the active fires are analyzed to investigate the possibility that these fires may generate enough heat for direct injection of smoke to the free troposphere. In most cases, the aerosol plumes are observed within the boundary layer, with no evidence for direct injection to the free troposphere. However, the range of top heights of the smoke layers found to range between 1.5 and 6 km indicating also cases when smoke penetrates in the free troposphere. The MODIS aerosol optical depth and OMI aerosol index retrievals are used to study the spatial horizontal smoke distributions and to evaluate the impact of wildfires on local air quality. Synergistic satellite observations of biomass burning plumes can provide significant aerosol information for model applications.