Red points are detected fires Image : NASA Worldview, Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) A new satellite image of our planet shows fires raging across the world, from Canada to Australia to South America to Sub-Saharan Africa. But despite its striking appearance, much of this is actually quite ordinary. Advertisement The map, created by NASA, denotes fires with red dots, based on heat measurements that detect fires. While it may look like the world is alarmingly aflame, fires occur every year. It’s the unusual intensity of fires in certain regions, linked to human-caused climate change, that we need to worry about. Here’s the uncropped image: Red points are detected fires Image : NASA Worldview, Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS “Pretty much wherever you have vegetated surface, you have fire. I don’t particularly think this is a crazy, out-of-the-ordinary year for the globe,” said Christine Wiedinmyer, associate director for science at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a partnership between NOAA and the University of Colorado, Boulder. But it’s a particularly big year for certain parts of the globe, she told Gizmodo. The parts where many of our readers live: “The Western U.S., California, and British Columbia—it’s a super big year.” You’ll notice that many of the data points appear in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar. These fires appear annually and come mostly from slash-and-burn agricultural practices common in the region. These methods clear fields and replenish the soil nutrients, but can also produce human-harming smoke. Many of the fires in Brazil and Indonesia are also due to these farming methods. NASA has a neat tool showing how fires burn across the globe over time that you can play with here, demonstrating the annual nature of Saharan, Sub-Saharan, and Indonesian fires. Advertisement But in some years, like 2015, these practices led to forest fires that severely impacted air quality and led to a haze in the region. Studies have suggested that the El Niño weather patterns made 2015 especially bad. This context is crucial to understanding a map like this. The fires are really bad, yes, but you need more than a map to explain why. Advertisement Take the fires in North America, as well as in many parts of South America—they are wildfires. You’ve likely heard all about the fires on the North American West Coast, many of which have been sparked by people and aggravated by the compounding effects of dry weather, winds, and high heat. A recent study demonstrated that south-central Chile is facing many of the same climate-related concerns, along with intense fires of its own. Another huge wildfire sparked up south of Berlin, Germany just today, causing evacuations. The AP reports that these fires have been complicated by buried ammunition from WWII blowing up. Germany has faced an especially hot and dry summer. You can expect climate change to exacerbate the conditions that cause these fires in the future, especially in places where the human population is expanding. Advertisement “We know that the climate really drives fire activity severity, particularly in the western U.S.,” Wiedinmyer said. These fires can have global impacts too, sending smoke across the ocean to Europe or up to the poles, she said. So, you shouldn’t be surprised that there are so many fires on Earth. But you should be worried about the increase in wildfires, which we can expect will continue to worsen during our lifetimes. And you should be really worried about people who deny humanity’s very real and often dangerous impact on the environment. Advertisement [NASA]<doc-sep>A whole lot of planet Earth is burning right now. In the U.S., record-setting wildfires in Western states dominate the headlines. But as a new image released by NASA's Worldview satellite imagery collection reveals, those fires represent just a fraction of the total portion of the planet that's dominated by fire right now. The image highlights in red all of the regions of the planet where satellites currently detect active fires — though NASA noted in a statement that not all of those red points are necessarily wildfires. "Africa seems to have the most concentrated fires," NASA officials said in the statement. "This could be due to the fact that these are most likely agricultural fires ... Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants." So not all the fires in this burning world are out of control. But "while fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality," NASA added. And Africa hardly accounts for all of the flare-ups visible on this map. North and South America, as well as Australia, have had widespread — and sometimes record-setting —wildfires this year, NASA officials said, as a result of warming temperatures and droughts linked to climate change, as well as forest mismanagement in some areas. "For large areas in the north and west [in Australia]," NASA said, "bushfire season has been brought forward a whole two months to August — well into winter… According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology … the January to July period 2018 was the warmest in [New South Wales] since 1910. As the climate continues to change and areas become hotter and drier, more and more extreme bushfires will break out across the entire Australian continent." In an email to Live Science, NASA spokesperson Lynn Jenner said that the agency does not have an exact figure for the portion of the global landmass on fire at this time. Originally published on Live Science.<doc-sep>
NASA's Worldview program has some bad news. The Earth is on fire. The red points in the picture above are areas around the world with fires actively burning, accurate as of Thursday. It doesn't look great. The Worldview website lets you look at current events happening across the planet. One of those events is wildfires, detected through the use of thermal bands to mark any actively burning fires. Now, as NASA notes in a statement, these aren't necessarily all wildfires - but it's still an impactful image. We've all seen news about the fires in North America, but South America also has had a horrific number of fires this year. And, as you can see on the map, Africa is actually the big one, with fires burning across large swaths of the southern parts of the continent. "This could be due to the fact that these are most likely agricultural fires. The location, widespread nature, and number of fires suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land," a NASA spokesperson explains. "Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants. While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality." Australia, and other areas in the Pacific are also suffering from wildfires and bushfires despite being in winter right now. In fact, Australia is currently in the middle of an unusually severe drought through most of the country. "Hotter, drier summers in Australia will mean longer fire seasons - and urban sprawl into bushland is putting more people at risk for when those fires break out," NASA explains. "For large areas in the north and west, bushfire season has been brought forward a whole two months to August - well into winter, which officially began 1 June. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the January to July period 2018 was the warmest in NSW since 1910." And there lies the kicker – this is not some freak event. As Cassandra Mosely explains at The Conversation, there are a number of reasons why wildfires are getting worse, including climate change. The reasons "include climate change, past forest and fire management practices, housing development, increased focus on community protection and the professionalization of wildfire management," she writes. "Fire seasons are growing longer in the United States and worldwide. According to the Forest Service, climate change has expanded the wildfire season by an average of 78 days per year since 1970." Let's just hope we can get back some control over our world's climate, and make this map a little less red.