In November 2019, destructive bushfires raged near the coast of New South Wales, Australia, sending smoke billowing over the Tasman Sea. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image of the smoke plumes on November 7.
Fires that day burned from north of Sydney to near the border with Queensland. According to the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, 29 of the 69 fires burning across the state remained uncontrolled.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Text by Kathryn Hansen.