NASA has released a series of videos illustrating the tens of millions of fires that have occurred worldwide over the last decade, from the seasonal burns that torch stretches of African savanna each year to the rampant fires that devastated western Russia in 2010. The visualizations — which were created using satellite data, aircraft and ground resources, and NASA’s MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) technology — provide a glimpse of the huge impact that fires have on the global environment each year. They also provide critical insights into where and how the distribution of fires is responding to climate change and population growth, says Chris Justice, a University of Maryland researcher who leads NASA’s efforts to study the planet’s fires using the MODIS technology. One video takes viewers on a narrated virtual tour of major fires detected between July 2002 and July 2011, panning from wildfires in Australia’s grasslands, to massive agricultural fires in China, to the path of destructive flames that burned across Europe and western Russia. According to NASA data, about 70 percent of the world’s fires occur in Africa, largely because of agricultural activities but also as a result of lighting strikes.

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Photo by Rennett Stowe/flickr/Creative Commons