At the southern end of the West Siberia Plain, several large and smoky fires were burning in the area around Novosibirsk on May 19, 2006. This image of the fires (outlined in red) was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. According to news reports, May 2006 has been hot and dry, with accompanying high fire danger. The West Siberia Plain is a wet region, and it has large amounts of peat. Peat fires can be long-lived and can produce vast amounts of smoke. It is possible that some of the large, smoky fires seen in this image are peat fires.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
