Agricultural fires burned from Senegal to Ghana at the end of 2008. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite took this picture on December 29, 2008. In this image, the red dots indicate hotspots—thermal anomalies associated fires. The greatest concentration of hotspots in this image stretches from Guinea through the Ivory Coast, although numerous fires also burn on either side of this thick fire band.
Haze hovers over the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Guinea, and some of the haze might result from dust blown from the Bodele Depression, in addition to smoke from the fires shown in this image.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
