Fires in Italy

Fires in Italy

27 July 2007

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In Italy and neighboring southern European countries, extreme heat exacerbated dozens of forest fires burning across the country. According to news reports, many of the fires were started by people hoping to lay claim to the degraded land for new construction. This image of Italy was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on 24 July 2007, and places where the sensor detected actively burning fires are marked in red. Several fires are large enough to spread smoke over the AdriaticSea.

AQUA
24 July 2007

The extreme heat in southern Europe and the devastating flooding in the United Kingdom are linked to an unusually southern position of the jetstream, which is bringing hot air from Africa to southern Europe and causing storms to track across the United Kingdom. Fires are also burning across the Balkans.

The large image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum resolution of 250 meters perpixel.

(source: EarthObservatory)

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