Southeasterly winds were aligning the smoke plumes from scores of fires burning on New Guinea on October 13, 2004, when this image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Most of the fires (marked in red) appear concentrated between the southern coast and the Fly River (delta at lower right).
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the MODIS Rapid Response team.
