These images show space- and ground-based views of the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, Colo.
NASA Looks at Fires Burning Around the World -Updated Every 10 Days
This fire map accumulates locations of fires detected by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies on board NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites over a 10-day period. Each colored dot indicates a fire.
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MODIS Rapid Response
View and download imagery captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. The instruments frequently capture images of wildfires.
Top Story
News and Features
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NASA Observes the Waldo Canyon Fire, Colo.
06.27.12 - These images show space- and ground-based views of the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, Colo.
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Burn Scar Imagery from USGS →
Imagery from the U.S. Geological Survey shows satellite-based before and after views of fires in Colorado and New Mexico.
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NASA Satellite Sees Several Western U.S. Fires Blazing
06.22.12 - NASA's Aqua satellite picked up smoke and identified hot spots from fires in Colorado, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.
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Satellite Sees Smoke from Siberian Fires Reach the U.S. Coast
06.11.12 - Fires burning in Siberia recently sent smoke across the Pacific Ocean and into the U.S. and Canada.
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Mild Amazon Fire Season Forecast in 2012
05.10.12 - Amazon Basin forests are expected to be less vulnerable to wildfires this year, according to the first forecast from a new fire severity model.
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Fire and the Future of Yellowstone
Immediately after the 1988 Yellowstone fire, grass flourished in the ash-rich soil, followed by young trees. By 2011, the slender saplings were still not dense enough to hide the burn scar.
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Ocean Temperatures Can Predict Amazon Fire Season Severity
11.10.11 - Researchers created a model to predict the severity and geographic distribution of fires in the Amazon rain forest and the rest of South America months in advance.
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NASA Releases Visual Tour of Earth's Fires
10.19.11 - NASA has released a series of new satellite data visualizations that show tens of millions of fires detected worldwide from space since 2002.
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A Look Back at a Decade of Fires
10.19.11 - For more than a decade, instruments on NASA satellites have revolutionized what scientists know about fire's role in land cover change, ecosystem processes, and the global carbon cycle.
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Thick Vegetation Fuels Australia Fires →
10.12.2011 - Australia may be in for an intense fire season this spring and summer as the warm temperatures settle in.
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NASA Sees Nitrogen Dioxide Levels from the Pagami Creek Fire in Minnesota
09.20.11 - The Pagami Creek fire in northern Minnesota, sparked by a lightning strike in mid-August, intensified significantly in mid-September, creating a smoke plume visible from space that drifted to create hazy skies over Chicago, and subsequently traveled over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.
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Bastrop County Complex Fire Burn Scar →
09.13.2011 - Wildfires burned in Texas and Oklahoma in September 2011, fueled by high temperatures, high winds, and low humidity.
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NASA Airborne Sensor Helps Fire Crews Battle Flames
08.18.11 - A NASA thermal-infrared scanner mounted in a NASA aircraft stands ready to support the Forest Service and CAL FIRE with real-time wildfire imagery.
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Texas Burns But What's the Global Fire Trend? →
09.07.2011 - Wildfires that have destroyed more than a thousand homes and threaten thousands more continue to rage in central Texas.
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NASA Spacecraft Sees Wind-Whipped Fires in East Texas
09.07.11 - Some of the more than 170 major wildfires that have erupted throughout drought-stricken Texas in the past week are visible in this NASA satellite image of east Texas.
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Hurricane Irene Helps to Squelch Great Dismal Swamp Fire, Va. →
08.30.2011 - One of the potential benefits of Hurricane Irene may be to help extinguish a large fire burning in the Great Dismal Swamp.
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Extreme 2010 Russian Fires and Pakistan Floods Linked
08.30.11 - Two of the most destructive natural disasters of 2010 were closely linked by a single meteorological event, even though they occurred 1,500 miles (2,414 km) apart and were of completely different natures, a new NASA study suggests.
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Landsat Image Maps Aid Fire Recovery Efforts
08.23.11 - NASA satellite images regularly map active fires around the world.
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NASA Airborne Sensors Help Firefighters Battle Flames
08.18.11 - As the summer blazes on, NASA-developed infrared imaging technology will once again be used to support wildfire incident commanders in California.
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Satellite Shows Burn Scar from Fourmile Canyon Fire of Sept. 2010
07.29.11 - A wildfire broke out west of Boulder, Colorado, in early September 2010, threatening hundreds of structures and bathing Boulder in smoke.
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NASA Measures Wildfire Pollution Pour Over Niagara Falls
07.28.11 - Water isn't the only thing pouring over Niagara Falls. Pollution from fires in Ontario, Canada is also making the one thousand mile trip, while being measured by NASA's Aqua satellite.
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Smoke Gets in Your Skies
07.27.11 - An image showing smoke over the Chesapeake Bay drifting north from wildfires in N.C. and Ga. as viewed by the HSRL aboard NASA Langley’s UC-12 aircraft.
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Aura Detects Pollution in the Great Lakes Region
07.21.11 - Fires throughout Ontario are generating pollution that is showing up in data from NASA's Aura Satellite in the Great Lakes region.
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Aura Measures Pollution 'Butterfly'
07.15.11 - Central African fires are generating a high amount of pollution in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola.
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Aura Probes Fire's Fading Pollution Plume in Northern Canada
07.15.11 - Recent pollution levels from the fires in Canada's Northwest Territories do not appear to be as high as they were at the end of June as the fires have come under more control since then.
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Aura Satellite Measures Pollution From Fires
07.01.11 - NASA's Aura Satellite has provided a view of nitrogen dioxide levels coming from the fires in New Mexico and Arizona.
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Northeastern Florida Beachgoers Affected by Smoke From the Honey Prairie Fires
06.23.11 - The Honey Prairie Complex fires burning in southeastern Georgia continue to blanket southeastern Georgia and northeastern Florida with smoke, triggering Dense Smoke Advisories throughout the region.
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NASA Spacecraft Monitors Continuing Burn of Arizona's Largest-Ever Wildfire
06.23.11 - The Wallow fire is the largest fire ever to occur in Arizona.
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Landsat Helps Fight Largest Fire in Arizona History
06.16.11 - Arizona's largest fire in history continues to burn and Landsat data is being used to plan firefighting containment strategies and mitigation efforts.
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OMI views NO2 from Fires, Pollution, and Energy Production in U.S. Southwest →
Arizona's Wallow Fire produces plume of nitrogen oxides; power plants and cities are also sources.
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Landsat Satellite Sees Arizona Wildfire Sweep Through Apache National Forest
06.09.11 - The second largest fire in Arizona history, the Wallow Fire is graphically depicted by this Landsat image, taken June 7, which shows burning in the mountains of eastern Arizona near the border with New Mexico.
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NASA Satellites Acknowledge Busy 2011 Fire Season in Mexico
06.01.11 - May usually marks the end of the fire season in Mexico.
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Five-Acre Fire Near NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, California
05.17.11 - On May 16, 2011 a brush fire behind NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., burned and firefighters were able to douse it the same day.
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NASA Partners With Cal Fire for Wildfire Imaging
12.14.10 - NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., has signed a Space Act Agreement with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) to use NASA technology and capabilities to help support the management and mitigation of wildfire disasters.
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NASA Models Earth's Fiery Past and Future
10.27.10 - Over long time scales, research has shown that both the climate and humans have a profound effect on wildfire activity around the globe.
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Wildfires: A Symptom of Climate Change
09.24.10 - Thousands of wildfires are underway at any given time across the globe, and this "biomass" burning is part of the equation for global warming.
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Colorado's "Reservoir Road Fire" from Space
09.13.10 - On Sept. 12 the MODIS instrument on Aqua captured a visible image of the Reservoir Road Fire that is currently raging in the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests.
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Satellites Show Wildfire-Beetle Attacks Connection
09.08.10 - A new video shows how NASA maps pine beetle outbreaks, and what impact the beetle damage might have on forest fires.
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NASA Satellite Data Aids United Nations' Ability to Detect Global Fire Hotspots
09.07.10 - In the midst of a difficult fire season in many parts of the world, the United Nations' (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization has launched a new online fire detection system that will help firefighters and natural hazards managers improve response time and resource management.
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Fire on Oil Platform in Gulf of Mexico
09.02.10 - Though obscured by clouds, NASA's Terra satellite was able to see smoke coming from an oil platform that caught fire Sept. 2, 2010.
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NASA's Terra Satellite Sees Intense Fires and Smoke Over Western Russia
08.13.10 - The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite detected two clusters of intense fires when it acquired a photo-like image.
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NASA Supports California Wildfire Control Efforts
10.01.09 - NASA and the U.S. Forest Service again partnered to obtain visible light, infrared and thermal imagery of California wildfires in response to July 2008 requests from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and the National Interagency Fire Center.
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NASA Aircraft Flies California Post-burn Imaging
11.24.09 - NASA's remotely piloted Predator B aircraft, the Ikhana, equipped with an infrared imaging sensor, recently conducted post-burn assessments of two Southern California wildfire sites, the Piute Fire in Kern County and the Station Fire in the Angeles National Forest.
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Tracking South Carolina Wildfires
05.08.09 - Researchers from NASA Langley's Science Directorate jumped into action recently, studying wildfire smoke with EPA partners.
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NASA Study: Climate Fuels Asian Wildfire Emissions
04.30.09 - Fires in equatorial Asia are growing more frequent and having a serious impact on the air as well as the land.
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CALIPSO Sees Through the Haze
04.22.09 - New research shows that the warming effect of aerosols, or small particles in the air, increases with the amount of cloud cover below the aerosols.
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CALIPSO Finds Smoke at High Altitudes Down Under
03.05.09 - CALIPSO traced vertically through the layers of the atmosphere to study the smoke from Australian bushfires in February.
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NASA Ames Scores Three Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards
09.26.08 - MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – Three teams of NASA Ames computer programmers, heat shield engineers and Earth scientists were honored earlier this month by the Federal Laboratory Consortium Far West Region for developing innovative technologies and partnerships.
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NASA Technology Helps Fight California Wildfires
07.16.08 - A remotely piloted aircraft carrying a NASA sensor is helping to fight more than 300 California wildfires.
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California Governor Visits NASA Ames Research Center
07.14.08 - MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger visited NASA’s Ames Research Center today to see first-hand how the agency is helping firefighters battle the widespread wildfires raging throughout the state.
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NASA Responds to California Wildfire Emergency Imaging Request
07.11.08 - A remotely piloted aircraft carrying a NASA sensor flew over much of California earlier this week, gathering information that will be used to help fight more than 300 wildfires burning within the state.
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NASA Ikhana Imagery of Fire and Smoke
View images of data collected by NASA's unmanned Ikhana aircraft, superimposed over Google Earth terrain data.
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Forest Fire Smoke Plumes Probed
07.03.08 - An international team of fire trackers, weather forecasters and various atmospheric scientists puzzle over computer models, satellite tracks and flight charts to determine how fires age.
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CARB Sniffs the Air Over California as Wild Fires Rage
06.30.08 - In an effort to better understand the chemical nature of smog and greenhouse gases, scientists from the California Air Resources Board, CARB are collaborating with NASA scientists who are flying specially configured aircraft -- the DC-8 and the P-3 -- up and down the California coast this month and over the Central valley at varying altitudes.
> View Image in High Resolution -
NASA Aircraft Examine Impact of Forest Fires on Arctic Climate
06.12.08 - NASA aircraft will follow the trails of smoke plumes from some of Earth's northernmost forest fires, examining their contribution to arctic pollution.
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Satellites Illuminate Pollution's Influence On Clouds
05.27.08 - Clouds serve a valuable role in Earth's climate, and thanks to A-Train, a closer look at them is possible.
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NASA Satellite Measures Pollution From East Asia to North America
03.17.08 - NASA satellites finds vast quantities of industrial aerosols and smoke from East Asia and Russia travel from one side of the globe to another.
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Images of the Harris Fire Taken from the NASA Ikhana Unmanned Airplane
10.24.07 - Images of the Harris fire taken from the NASA Ikhana Mission on Oct. 24, 2007.
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Remotely Piloted Aircraft to Demonstrate Imaging
08.22.07 - Dryden is conducting flights of a remotely piloted unmanned aircraft to demonstrate sophisticated new imaging and communications equipment.
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NASA Supports UAS Fire Mapping Efforts on California Fire
11.06.06 - A team led by NASA and U.S. Forest Service scientists recently collected real-time, visible and infrared data from sensors onboard a remotely piloted aircraft over the Esperanza Fire in Southern California.
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Central American Fires Impact U.S. Air Quality
10.10.06 - NASA scientists have shown that pollutants from Central American biomass burning can influence air quality and climate in the United States.
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'Imported' Pollution Tied to Poor Air Quality in Texas
09.21.06 - NASA satellites and other data have demonstrated the impact that pollutants traveling even thousands of miles can have on air quality.
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Asian Summer Monsoon Stirred by Dust in the Wind
09.07.06 - Dust in the --- rainfall?
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NASA Explains Puzzling Impact of Polluted Skies on Climate
07.13.06 - NASA studies pollution and its impacts on climate.
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NASA and US Forest Service to Tame Wildfires with UAV Capabilities
05.30.06 - Reporters are invited to observe advanced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies that expand wildfire imaging and mapping capabilities.
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Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: NASA Study Shows Global Impacts of Pollution
05.01.06 - Data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder is shedding new light on how natural and human-produced pollutants can have wide-reaching affects on the health of our global village.
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NASA Embarks On International Study Of Air Pollution Flowing Into U.S. From Abroad
03.09.06 - In Mexico City, a team of researchers from NASA and other institutions have kicked off the first phase of one of the most complex field campaigns ever undertaken in atmospheric chemistry.
