Jason Box at Dark Snow Project:

Sensors in Earth orbit give us the capability to monitor vast areas, daily, in near real-time. As part of the Dark Snow Project, I’ve been working with daily NASA MODIS MOD14A1 data to map the occurrence of fire activity. The map below illustrates the single most active day so far in 2015 for North America with fires ravaging central western Canada and interior Alaska.

Through 18 July, 2015, these data indicate the cumulative radiative power of North American fires to be the highest on record in the period of observations beginning in 2000. For July, 2015 fire power is 2.5 times the sixteen summer average 2000-2015.