Black Smoke Plume From Oil Refinery Fire in Libya Spotted From Orbit
A thick, black smoke plume spills out over the Mediterranean Sea from an oil refinery fire in Libya. This fire has been raging for almost a week and has destroyed approximately 1.8 million barrels of crude oil. This amount is roughly four times the amount that Libya produces in a day. The fire was caused by civil unrest.
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on December 29, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption: NASA/Goddard, Lynn Jenner
