Infrared radiation emerging from smoke produced by brush fires

This study presents the IR radiative transport properties of brush fire smoke clouds computed for a model with finite horizontal dimensions as well as the more common plane-parallel model. The finite model is a 3-D version of the two-stream approximation applied to cubic clouds of steam, carbon, and silicates. Assumptions are made with regard to the shape and size distributions of the smoke particles. It is shown that 11.5-microm radiometry can detect fires beneath smoke clouds if the path integrated mass density of the smoke is less, similar3 g/m(2).