Fires in Northern #Australia

Northern Australia has a landscape made for fire. Tropical rains support thick grasses in the rainy season; they turn to tinder during the dry season. Fires can occur any time during the dry season, from its cool beginning between April and June to its hot, windy end between October and December. Though fires are larger and more frequent at the end of the dry season, several fires burned in Western Australia and Northern Territory on April 9, 2015, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image. The fires are outlined in red.

1. References

2. Australian Government Geoscience Australia (2013, October 4) Australia’s dynamic land cover. Accessed April 9, 2015.
3. Commonwealth of Australia North Australian Fire Information. Accessed April 9, 2015.
4. Savanna Explorer Fire in Australia’s tropical savannas. Accessed April 9, 2015.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek and Adam Voiland.

Instrument(s): 

Aqua - MODIS