Gray-brown smoke stretches across a broad swath of western Canada in this true-color image from July 13, 2010. The smoke is coming from clusters of large fires burning in the remote forests of northern Saskatchewan. The fires are outlined in tiny red boxes in this image.
A ribbon of smoke extends both west and east from the fires, spanning the distance between the Great Slave Lake and Hudson Bay. The image (and therefore the smoke) covers just over 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from west to east. Smoke contains a mix of fine particles and gases like carbon monoxide. The fine particles can aggravate a person’s eyes and respiratory system.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on the afternoon of July 13. The image is available in a variety of resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response Team.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
