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Home Environment Climate

Ten years of fires as seen from outer space

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
October 22, 2011
in Climate, Remote sensing, Videos
Reading Time: 1 min read
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Using a pair of satellites that monitor the Earth, NASA recorded over 10.000.000 fires throughout the planet; they then took the recorded material and created an animation with it, as can be seen below. The animation also includes vegetation, snow cover, cloud cover, surface temperatures, and more.

Africa was by far the ‘hottest’ continent, being responsible for over 70 percent of the world’s fires. Meanwhile, the US was home of less than two percent. A very large cluster of agricultural- and lightning-sparked fires in African savanna lands, for example, can be seen from July through September 2006.

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The satellites (Terra satellite, launched in 1999, and Aqua, launched in 2002) carry instrument called a MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, which monitors a rainbow of different wavelengths of light emitted by or bounced off our host planet.

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The normalized vegetation index (NVI) is shown in the left, and it shows the intensity of vegetation, growing from left to right. Meanwhile, MODIS fire pixels (right) reveal the temperatures of the burning fire.

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Tags: nasaspace agency
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Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

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