Watching the World Burn

by: mataliandy

Thu Oct 25, 2007 at 10:34:33 AM EDT

In the California wildfire coverage, I came across a federal site with satellite images of fires throughout the world. I created a time-lapse movie of the images beginning january 1, 2007 and ending with the most recent image, from October 17. Images are created once every 10 days, and are a compilation of the daily images from that 10-day period. The current CA fires won't show up until the 28th.

The most interesting patterns seem to be the consistency of fires around deserts, and the mass of fire in and around the rainforest in S. America.

One has to wonder what these fires mean in terms of the desertification of the earth and the carbon in the atmosphere.