Summer down under means bushfire season is in full swing. On the Cape York Peninsula in Australia a number of fires have been spotted by the Suomi NPP satellite. The Queensland Government Rural Fire Service website lists a total of seven ongoing incidents, all of which are being monitored but are not an immediate threat, but it appears in this satellite image there are more fires across the peninsula then have been reported. This could be due to several reasons including the fact that some of the fires may be planned fires set to manage land.
NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite collected this natural-color image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on October 11, 2016. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner
Suomi NPP is managed by NASA and NOAA.