Small-scale burning in São Tomé

Driving through the dry northern side of São Tomé island, small-scale biomass and trash burning were a common occurrence. Although we were on the island as a base of operations to study the much thicker plumes of smoke wafting over the southeast Atlantic from the southern African continent (largely due to agricultural land-use), it was striking how common fire is in the landscape of tropical and subtropical Africa. The ORACLES (ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS) campaign sampled smoke from nearby São Tomé to plumes of continental smoke from off the coast of Angola all the way to Ascension Island.