File:Large Wildfires and Burn Scars in Russia (MODIS).jpg

English: The 2023 Russia fire season has started with a roar, with fire emerging along with the greening grasses in several areas of the country. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of a swath of large wildfires centered in Omsk Oblast on April 28. The fires also extended west into Tyumen Oblast and east into Novosibirsk Oblast.

Each red “hot spot” marks actively burning fire. In several locations, active fire rings the edges of dark brown or black burn scars. Burn scars—areas that have already been burnt by fire—are dark in color because the vegetation and soil has been charred, leaving little or no fuel that can sustain a fire. The rings of hot spots surrounding the scar are caused as the wildfire expands, moving forward into fresh fuel.

Several of the burn scars are extremely large. For example, the area of the figure-eight-shaped, least smokey burn scar near the center of the image measures roughly 2,400 square kilometers using the measurement tools available in NASA Worldview. That’s more than half the area of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The complicated conflagration of burn scars, active fire, and copious smoke to the west of the measured area appears to be quite a bit larger, perhaps double the size.

According to Global Forest Watch, the peak fire season in Russia begins in early May and continues for about 18 weeks. Scattered hot spots, marking small and early fires, began to appear in this region by April 1, according to a review of MODIS Aqua images available in NASA Worldview. The fires visible in this image were still active as of May 4.