Smoke from city-sized fire in Australia

9 February 2014 23:19 UTC and 11 February 2014 11:39 UTC.

Region

Australia

Satellites

Metop-A

Channels/Products

Natural Colour RGB, Infrared Channel

A large smoke plume from massive bushfires in Australia was clearly seen by Metop-A.

Last Updated

08 September 2022

Published on

14 February 2014

The day-time Metop-A Natural Colour RGB shows the smoke in cyan colour, and the night-time IR3.7 image shows the very large fires as coloured hot spots (the key shows the temperature in Kelvin).

A very dry summer meant parts of Southern Australia were left vulnerable to grass fires.

Figure 1: Metop-A image showing the large smoke plume over Victoria, Western Australia.

Victorian authorities reported that 45 houses were destroyed in the 432 grass fires that burned across the state for more than a week in early February. More than 180,000 hectares were burned.

High temperatures and strong winds fanned the intense and fast-moving blazes, as a weather change swept across the state bringing wind gusts up to 100km/h. About 9,000 head of stock died and another 3,000 were unaccounted for