As the wildfire rages in Southern California, an Earth-observing instrument aboard the International Space Station was able to measure its heat and dark smoke plume.
NASA's Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS)captured a birds-eye view of the vast Apple fire raging in Southern California.
The wildfire began on the evening of Friday, July 31, after two smaller fires merged and rapidly grew in the hot conditions in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, prompting the evacuation of thousands of residents. Air temperatures have soared past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), stressing the vegetation and turning the area into a tinderbox. By Monday, the wildfire had exploded to over 26,000 acres.
ECOSTRESS recorded the image above at 1:15 p.m. PST (4:15 p.m. EDT) on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020, when the burn area was approximately 4,000 acres in size. In the image, the black smoke plume can be seen drifting east and over Joshua Tree National Park in the Mojave Desert. With a spatial resolution of about 77 by 77 yards (70 by 70 meters), the image enables researchers to study surface-temperature conditions down to the size of a football field.
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Image via NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
