Bushfires in south and eastern Australian states started growing in number through October 2019, and have since sent smoke halfway around the world. As of early December, the fires continued to rage.

The fires are visible in this image, acquired at 2:45 p.m. local time on December 4, 2019, by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite. The fires burned near the coast of New South Wales, near Canberra and areas north to the border with Queensland.

According to the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, 116 bush and grass fires were actively burning around the time of this image; 60 of them were uncontained. The fire service also reported that a temperature inversion was expected to trap heavy smoke in the basin around Sydney.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Text by Kathryn Hansen.