On 15 August 2017 a pyroCb formed in Russia. Himawari-8 detected the smoke plume and pyroCb cloud, as well as the fires hot spots. The pyroCb cloud (~62.8º N, 122.4ºE) formed around 3:10 UTC . Starting at 2:30 UTC on 01 July, the animation below shows Himawari-8 0.63 µm visible (left) and 3.9 µm shortwave IR (right) . In the shortwave IR images, the red pixels indicate very hot IR brightness temperatures exhibited by the fire source regions.
HIMAWARI-8 0.63 µm visible channel (left) and 3.9 µm shortwave IR channel images (right) (click to play animation)
In addition, using Himawari-8 10.4 μm IR channel the cloud-top IR brightness temperatures could be found. The animation below, starting at 3:00 UTC on 15 August, shows the brightness temperature for the pyroCb cloud reaching near -57ºC around 4:40 UTC (red color enhancement).
HIMAWARI-8 10.4 µm IR channel images (click to play animation)
NOAA-19 AVHRR 0.64 µm visible (top left), 3.7 µm shortwave IR (top right), 10.8 µm IR window (bottom left) and false-color RGB composite image (bottom right)
A 1-km resolution NOAA-19 AVHRR 10.8 µm Infrared Window image (below;courtesy of René Servranckx) revealed a minimum cloud-top IR brightness temperature of -68.8º C (red color enhancement) for the pyroCb at 5:30 UTC.