File:Fires in Africa (MODIS).jpg

English: Widespread smoke and scattered cloud covered southwestern Africa in mid-September 2023. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the scene on September 19.

Red “hot spots” are scattered across Angola (north), Namibia (southwest), and Botswana (southeast). Each marks the spot where the thermal bands on the MODIS instrument detected high temperatures which, in this case, almost certainly are caused by actively burning fire. Smoke hangs over the entire region, but appears thinner in the coastal areas, where ocean breezes blow onshore. Inland, especially over Botswana, the smoke is so thick that it is hard to see the land beneath the gray pall.

Widespread fires across parts of Africa at this time of year are a typical sign of agricultural burning. Thousands of fires are deliberately set in the savannas and grassland each dry season to clear brush from cropland and pasture, to move game, and to burn the stubble from already harvested fields. Although it is not necessarily immediately hazardous, such large-scale burning can have a strong impact on weather, climate, human health, and natural resources.