The smoky remnants of October’s devastating fires still filled the southern California Central Valley on November 2, 2003. This “upside down” digital photograph was taken from the International Space Station from a position over the Pacific Northwest looking southward toward southern California. At the time this image was acquired, the fires had finally been brought under control, but ash and smoke remained trapped in the atmosphere above the valley, a bowl of land ringed by the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east (left) and the Coast Range Mountains to the west (right).
In June 2017, astronauts aboard the International Space Station were asked to take photographs of widespread wildfires on South Africa’s mountainous southern coast.
One of the largest and most destructive fires raging across California over the weekend of July 4 was the Basin Fire, threatening Big Sur, and covering the coast in a thick blanket of smoke.
Though fires across Russia appeared to be less intense than previously, these photo-like images show thick smoke rising from two regions in western Russia on August 15, 2010.
This photo-like image from August 4, 2010, shows intense fires burning across central Russia and a thick plume of smoke stretching about 3,000 kilometers (1,860 miles).