|
About | Contact | Mongabay on Facebook | Mongabay on Twitter | Subscribe |
|
|
 Courtesy of NASA Satellite image of fires in Oklahoma and Texas NASA release January 2, 2006 Drought, high temperatures, and strong winds combined with holiday fireworks, trash fires, and careless cigarettes to create a disaster in parts of Texas and Oklahoma in late December 2005. This image shows parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, as imaged by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying onboard the Aqua satellite. The sensor took this image on December 28, 2005, the same day that the fires caused the most damage. Cloud cover obscures part of the region, but hot spots, indicated in red, appear throughout the area, many of them sending up their own plumes of smoke. North and central Texas, where most of the fires occurred, saw its fifth driest year on record in 2005. In the Dallas-Forth Worth area, annual rainfall was about 41 centimeters (16 inches) below normal. In Oklahoma, the annual rainfall was about 30 centimeters (12 inches) below normal. Shortly before the grass fires spread throughout the region, local temperatures topped 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) and worsened the already dry conditions. The wind and heat abated somewhat after the fires started, but the National Weather Service predicted a return of heat and wind right before New Year's Day of 2006. Authorities expressed concern that a fresh round of holiday fireworks could touch off a fresh round of fires. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team. This is a modified news release from Earth Observatory & Natural Hazards. The purpose of NASA's Earth Observatory is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The focus is on Earth's climate and environmental change.
Tags: climate science climate change remote sensing Satellite Imagery drought green News index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing
|
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 
Photos HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS / PRINTS 
CALENDARS 
CANVAS BAGS 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright mongabay 2010 Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from mongabay.com operations (server, data transfer, travel) are mitigated through an association with Anthrotect, an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region. Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant. |
