Agricultural burning season was well underway in central Africa as of July 8, 2004, when this image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. West of Lake Tanganyika (right) hundreds, possibly thousands of fires were detected by MODIS and have been marked in this scene in yellow. The small smoke plumes from so many fires mingles into a layer of haze across the left-hand portion of the image.
Image by Jesse Allen, 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.