Satellite: Aqua Date Acquired: 8/30/2012 Resolutions: 1km (326.6 KB) 500m (1.1 MB) 250m (2.8 MB) Bands Used: 1,4,3 Credit: Jeff Schmaltz MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

At the end of a dry, hot summer, wildfires blazed across southeast Europe in August and September, 2012. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of fires and smoke across the region on August 30, 2012.

According to Acuweather.com, intense heat and stubborn summer drought has withered crops and sparked wildfires across the region, with Serbia and Bosnia hit especially hard by drought. In this image, red “hotspots”, which mark fires speckle the entire region captured in this image, but smoke is heaviest near the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The smoke rises from dozens of fires, coalesces off the coast of Montenegro (north) and Albania (south) and pours across the Mediterranean Sea, passing to the east of Italy.

Curator: Brandon Maccherone
NASA Official: Shannell Frazier