Algorithms and techniques to inform an air quality forecasting system with near real-time satellite observations have been developed, demonstrated, and validated. These techniques are generally applicable to any air quality forecasting system, and in many cases do not depend on the particular satellite instrument chosen as the source of real time data. Validation of satellite derived fire products has been performed using ground truth provided by incident management teams; contrasting starkly with previous approaches of validation-by-simulation or by comparison with other measurements from space.