Wildfires

Wildfires - Siberia

Wildfires happen every summer, but the especially warm northern summer of 2016 has been particularly bad for wildfires (as was 2015). As months-long wildfires still burn in California, the boreal forests of eastern Russia are burning, too, with numerous blazes since July, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). This image is from ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite, taken September 14. It shows smoke billowing from a string of fires northwest of Lake Baikal in Siberia. These huge smoke plumes stretch over 1,600 miles (2,000 kilometres), nearly half the distance across the contiguous U.S. (from Florida to Washington is 2,802 miles, or 4,500 km).