NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of several areas of smoke from fires in southern Italy on July 12.
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard the Aqua satellite. The image, taken at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC) showed actively burning areas in red, as detected by MODIS’s thermal bands.
There is a large area of fire and smoke south of Naples around and along the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. On July 12, the mayor of Naples requested the country declare a national state of emergency because of the fires raging in the Mount Vesuvius National Park in addition to almost 300 wildfires burning across the country. The volcano is not erupting. These fires are believed to have been human-caused.
A smaller area of fires are located west of Messina, near the tip of Italy’s “boot.” There were also scattered fires on the island of Sicily.
NASA image courtesy NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption: NASA/Goddard, Rob Gutro