West of Lake Tanganyika in east-central Africa, smoke chokes the air over Democratic Republic of Congo, where the annual fire season has been ongoing for several weeks. Fires are also burning to the east of Tanganyika in Tanzania, and to the southwest, in Zambia. This image of the haze and fires (orange dots) was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite on May 16, 2004.
Image by Earth Observatory staff, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC
On August 5, 2004, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite registered more than 12,000 active fire detections across south-central Africa.