NASA MODIS Image of the Day: December 15, 2011 – Fires and dust in western Africa
A broad band of smoke and dust covered western Africa and the Gulf of Guinea while hundreds of fires speckled the land in mid-December 2011.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image on December 12, 2011.
The red speckles represent thermal anomalies – areas where the instrument registers temperatures higher than background. Combined with smoke, such hotspots typically represent fires. The abundance of fires and the time of year makes it likely that these fires are agricultural in origin, and have been deliberately set to prepare land for planting or pasture. The overlying haze is undoubtedly rich in smoke from these fires, and also carries dust blown from the Sahara desert. Pollution from industry, autos and other anthropogenic sources is likely part of the mix. Black borderlines have been overlain on this image to delineate country borders. The non-coastal countries seen in this image, from west to east are Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. The coastal countries, from west to east are Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria.
