A month after the start of spring, fires raged across Australia’s Northern Territory.
A month after the start of spring, fires raged across Australia’s Northern Territory. A warm and dry start to the season created an environment ripe for blazes in the fire-prone outback.
The VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this natural-color image of smoke from fires in the Northern Territory on October 10, 2023. About 15 fires raged in the territory on that date, with several burning near Alice Springs, a town of about 25,000 people.
The largest plume of smoke in the image streamed from the Gillens Bore fire, located approximately 85 kilometers north of Alice Springs, along the Stuart Highway. As of October 12, the fire had burned almost 19,000 hectares (46,000 acres). Notice a burn scar on Northern Territory’s border with Western Australia. The scar is from the Tanami fire, located north of Lake MacKay, which was still burning as of October 12.
Read More: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin
