Billowing smoke from Northern California wildfires

Billowing smoke from Northern California wildfires is visible in this Envisat image acquired on 25 June 2008 with the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument. Satellites are not only able to detect the smoke billowing from major fires but also the burn scars left in their wake. The fires themselves appear as 'hotspots' when the satellites’ sensors scan the Earth's surface in infrared wavelengths.