Fires in the Canary Islands

Fires in the Canary Islands

1 August 2007

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Two large forest fires raged on the Canary Islands on the afternoon of 30 July 2007, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this photo-like image. Clusters of red dots mark out the locations of the fires on the islands of Tenerife (left) and Gran Canaria (right).

 AQUA
30 July 2007

More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the fire on Gran Canaria, which had burned through 8,645 acres ofwoodland, reported the Associated Press on 30 July. Thick plumes of smoke blow southwest over the Atlantic Ocean from the fires. The desert coast of Western Sahara and Morocco makes up the right edge of the image. A faint tan veil of dust hangs over the ocean near thecoast.

The large image provided above has a resolution of 250 meters per pixel.

Smoke off the West Coast of Africa

Dust and smoke mixed over the Atlantic as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite took this picture on 28 July 2007.

  AQUA
28 July 2007

In this image, a beige dust plume hundreds of kilometers long blows off the west coast of Africa in a clockwise direction, toward the northwest. West of that plume is another, lighter plume, which may consist of dust or some combination of dust and smoke. As the dust blows off the Sahara, a plume of pale gray smoke blows off Gran Canaria, also curving toward the northwest. While the smoke largely skirts Tenerife, it heads straight for San Sebastián and Santa Cruz.

The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of250 meters per pixel.

(source: EarthObservatory)

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