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Peatland Fires Darken Skies in Indonesia

✇NASA Breaking News




No Fire Detections
Fire Detections

Thick gray plumes of smoke stream from large numbers of fires scattered across the island of Borneo.
Thick gray plumes of smoke stream from large numbers of fires scattered across the island of Borneo.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

The locations of MODIS fire detections are depicted with small red circles. Most are visible on the southern side of the island.
The locations of MODIS fire detections are depicted with small red circles. Most are visible on the southern side of the island.

Thick gray plumes of smoke stream from large numbers of fires scattered across the island of Borneo.
Thick gray plumes of smoke stream from large numbers of fires scattered across the island of Borneo.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
The locations of MODIS fire detections are depicted with small red circles. Most are visible on the southern side of the island.
The locations of MODIS fire detections are depicted with small red circles. Most are visible on the southern side of the island.

No Fire Detections

Fire Detections


If there were an apex predator among fires, tropical peatland fires would be a top contender. These fires, which burn in dried wetland soils, are slow-burning, highly polluting, and notoriously difficult to extinguish because they smolder at low temperatures and often burn underground through expansive deposits of peat. By one estimate, peat fires generate three times more fine particulate matter than other tropical forest fires, five times more sulfur dioxide, three times more organic carbon, and two times more methane and carbon monoxide.

Fire season was underway in Indonesia when the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on September 1, 2026. In the map on the right, each red dot depicts one “fire detection.” A fire detection is a pixel in which the sensor and an algorithm determined there were thermal anomalies indicative of fire. Multiple detections can be generated by a single fire.

Peat fires are a recurring challenge in Indonesia, which is home to about 36 percent of the world’s tropical peatlands. When parched by drought, the archipelago’s peat landscapes have become unrelenting infernos on several occasions over the past three decades, with fires producing blankets of smoke for weeks on end and upending daily life for millions of people.

While fires occur in Indonesia every year, previous El Niño years—1997 and 2015 especially—produced the most extreme burning in recent decades. The climate pattern, assessed by NOAA as present and strengthening in August, typically leads to sharp reductions in rainfall in Indonesia, particularly when combined with a positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole, which was also present.

“Indonesia is only about three weeks into its fire season, but we’re seeing fire activity track sharply upward, similar to 2015,” said Robert Field, a Columbia University researcher who developed a tool called the Global Fire Weather Database that produces experimental, real-time fire weather forecasts. “The strong El Niño is making the dry season drier over the fire-prone parts of the country and exacerbating burning—just as we anticipated it would,” he said. In 2015, after burning for more than three months, Indonesia’s fires had released 1.75 billion tons of greenhouse gas equivalents—more than Japan emits in a year. As of September 2, Indonesia’s 2026 fires, having burned for about a month, have released roughly 10 percent as much as the 2015 fires.          

As in 2015, Indonesia was in the midst of a severe and widespread drought in summer 2026. About 90 percent of the country received little to no rainfall in early August, according to data from the Indonesian meteorological agency. Normally, it’s too wet for fires to spread through underground peat deposits in Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Papua, but they can in dry conditions. “Surface fires are less of a concern, but when fires get underground, they just won’t stop,” Field said. “They’ll keep burning until the rains come in October or November.” 

The Indonesian government uses NASA and NOAA observations from the MODIS and VIIRS sensors to track active fires in near-real-time. Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry MODIS- and VIIRS-based fire-monitoring platform SiPongi, for instance, tallied 946 hotspots on August 31, 2026.

However, it’s difficult for MODIS and VIIRS to detect fires through thick smoke or clouds, within the forest understory, or underground in peat deposits. When Indonesian fires become the most intense, the number of fires recorded by VIIRS or MODIS can actually decrease. “The worst smoke events, paradoxically, can be the hardest to observe from space with MODIS and VIIRS,” said Mark Cochrane, an ecologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who has conducted field research on peat fires in Indonesia for nearly a decade.

The large-scale construction of irrigation canals and drainage of peat swamps in the 1990s, part of an effort to establish massive rice farms, contributed to the flammability of the region today by significantly lowering the water table in wetland areas, Cochrane said. He also noted that oil palm and other plantation forestry is common in this region. Yet after an unusually grim fire season in 2015, governments and other organizations have worked to dam up some irrigation canals and restore wetlands. There have also been renewed efforts to improve firefighting capacity and reduce the number of fires that people accidentally ignite.

“This year will be a real stress test of the measures that were put in place after 2015,” said Shi Jun Wee, a University of Maryland graduate student. Wee is working on a team partnering with NASA and MapBiomas to develop new algorithms and techniques to detect more understory fires than MODIS and VIIRS can by tapping into shortwave infrared observations from Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites. As the fires progress, he plans to track developments using NASA’s Worldview data browser, FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System), HLS (Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2) observations, and GFED (Global Fire Emissions Database).

On the ground in Indonesia and neighboring countries, the smoke is already causing widespread disruptions. Indonesian officials have warned that large swaths of the population have been exposed to hazardous smoke. Some schools started shifting to remote learning, nine national parks have closed, and several flights have been delayed due to heavy smoke, according to news reports.

“People tend to focus on these fires during an El Niño and then forget about them,” Cochrane said. “We need sustained focus, even during the years when they aren’t as bad, to solve this,” he said. “These fires create a tremendous amount of emissions.”

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

The locations of MODIS fire detections are depicted with small red circles. Most are visible on the southern side of the island.

September 1, 2026

JPEG (3.34 MB)

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Chasing Fire Clouds in Utah

✇NASA Breaking News
Natural Color
Brightness Temperature
Textured gray wildfire smoke streams east from a fire burning near Fishlake National Forest. A dark shadow is visible to the east of a tall plume near the fire front.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A data visualization shows the cloud-top brightness temperature of the same scene. Tall, cold smoky clouds appear white, and warmer plumes at lower heights appear purple.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Textured gray wildfire smoke streams east from a fire burning near Fishlake National Forest. A dark shadow is visible to the east of a tall plume near the fire front.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
A data visualization shows the cloud-top brightness temperature of the same scene. Tall, cold smoky clouds appear white, and warmer plumes at lower heights appear purple.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison
Natural Color
Brightness Temperature
A smoke-infused pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) rises from the Widemouth 2 fire in Utah in these images captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The left image is natural color; the right image is false color, revealing cloud-top brightness temperatures below -40°C, a commonly used threshold for identifying pyroCbs. NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison.

Scientists have long known that volcanoes can launch large quantities of particles into the stratosphere. In the past few decades, it has become clear that wildfires do this, too, by generating towering, smoke-infused pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds.

The largest pyroCbs are stunning weather-making features that generate massive thunderheads capable of unleashing lightning, hail, and heavy rain. A growing body of research shows that pyroCbs can also leave an outsized imprint on the upper atmosphere by channeling pulses of particles and gases into the stratosphere’s mostly dry, cloudless confines. Once there, smoke can spread widely and linger for months or years, sometimes circling the globe and likely influencing the ozone layer and Earth’s energy budget.

Understanding these enigmatic and dangerous clouds is why a team of atmospheric scientists—part of a NASA mission called INSPYRE (INjected Smoke and PYRocumulonimbus Experiment)—is spending the summer chasing them with NASA’s ER-2 aircraft, NSF/NCAR’s GV, and a suite of truck-based sensors. The team completed one of its first sampling runs of the summer on August 3, 2026, when the GV flew through a high-altitude pulse of smoke from the Widemouth 2 fire, one of Utah’s largest so far this year.

Lightning ignited the fire on July 27, 2026, but it remained relatively small until August 2, when it more than doubled in size amid intense winds and hot, dry conditions. That afternoon, soon after it had produced two pyroCb bursts, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image (above), showing a chimney of high-altitude cloud and smoke casting a shadow on low-altitude smoke below.

These bursts propelled clouds high enough that Aqua measured cloud-top brightness temperatures well below −40°C, a common threshold for identifying pyroCbs and a sign that the cloud tops were bubbling to the top of the troposphere and sometimes into the stratosphere. The brightness temperature measurements “reveal two discrete pulses of pyroCb action,” said Michael Fromm, a scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. “The westernmost is the youngest pulse and stands out in the visible imagery by virtue of its shadow.”

Though relatively routine and minor, this pyroCb event followed a pre-dawn pyroCb from the same fire, imaged by the NOAA weather satellite GOES-West. “Morning pyroCbs are much more unusual,” Fromm said, because they don’t benefit from daytime heating that helps fuel convection. In this case, however, there appeared to be enough atmospheric instability and water vapor in the air to allow for pyroCb development. 

Multiple pyroCbs in a single day could have added unwanted complexity for forecasters and fire officials battling the blaze and organizing evacuations, said David Peterson, INSPYRE’s principal investigator. “Minimizing that sort of uncertainty for fire forecasters is a big part of the reason we’re out here studying this,” he added.

Remote sensing experts like Peterson and Fromm routinely study pyroCbs from afar with satellites, but it’s less common for pilots to chase and sample smoke plumes just hours after they form. In this case, the GV aircraft, on the ground in Colorado when the Widemouth 2 fire blew up, made a beeline for a high-altitude smoke plume as it drifted over New Mexico on August 3. The instruments on the plane sampled smoke at roughly 12 kilometers (8 miles) above the surface, collecting data at a height that isn’t typically incorporated into forecast models.

An aerial image shows a thick, puffy white cloud rising high above a patch of darker smoke visible near a surface of variable mountainous terrain.
A photo of the Widemouth 2 fire taken from an INSPYRE aircraft during a sampling flight on August 3, 2026, shows a smoke-infused cloud rising high above the fire.
Bernadett Weinzierl/University of Vienna

During that mission, a scientist on board captured this image (above) of a pyrocumulus (pyroCu) billowing up over the Widemouth 2 fire. While not as tall or energetic as pyroCbs, pyroCus are precursor clouds that share many of the same characteristics. Here, heat from the fire is fueling strong convective updrafts, forming a towering cloud with puffy overshooting tops that poke into the upper troposphere as lower-altitude smoke drifts below.

Satellites excel at identifying pyroCbs by measuring the temperature of the cloud tops that form above smoke plumes. Using this technique, researchers have established that wildfires produce about 70 pyroCbs per year, many in dense forests of Canada and Russia, though plenty also occur in grasslands and savannas in the United States and Australia. So far in 2026, Fromm and colleagues have identified at least 13 in the continental United States.

Since one of the first pyroCbs appeared in the scientific literature in the early 2000s, scientists have cataloged well over 700 events, and they now believe that wildfires may contribute up to 25 percent of the black carbon and organic aerosols in the lower stratosphere. The sheer frequency of pyroCbs means that the total mass of particles they inject over the course of a wildfire season may rival that of large volcanic eruptions.

Still, many questions about the enigmatic clouds remain unanswered. It isn’t clear what vegetation is most likely to fuel pyroCbs, why some form more lightning than others, why they form in only a small fraction of fires, and how to accurately forecast them.

“Whether it be their dangerous manifestations on the ground or their long-lasting imprint on the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere,” Fromm said, “pyroCbs continue to surprise us.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Photo by Bernadett Weinzierl/University of Vienna. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

Textured gray wildfire smoke streams east from a fire burning near Fishlake National Forest. A dark shadow is visible to the east of a tall plume near the fire front.

August 2, 2026: Natural Color

JPEG (1.63 MB)

A data visualization shows the cloud-top brightness temperature of the same scene. Tall, cold smoky clouds appear white, and warmer plumes at lower heights appear purple.

August 2, 2026: Brightness Temperature

JPEG (1.07 MB)

An aerial image shows a thick, puffy white cloud rising high above a patch of darker smoke visible near a surface of variable mountainous terrain.

August 3, 2026

JPEG (319.28 KB)

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Cascade Volcanoes Shrouded in Smoke

✇NASA Breaking News
An ice-capped volcano stands at the center of the image, its surrounding terrain blanketed in brown-gray smoke.
July 31, 2026

In a contrast of fire and ice, smoke from wildland fires mingled with several of the Cascade Range’s prominent, glaciated volcanoes in summer 2026. Astronauts on the International Space Station photographed the scene while orbiting over the U.S. West in late July and early August.

Mount Hood, Oregon’s tallest peak at 11,249 feet (3,429 meters), is pictured above, near a thick plume of smoke pouring from the Grasshopper fire. Thunderstorms passed over the forest in the preceding weeks, and a lightning strike on July 23 ignited the blaze pictured in this July 31 photo. The fire, burning east of the mountain, spread quickly north and east across Mount Hood National Forest amid hot, dry conditions, according to InciWeb.

As of August 12, it had burned nearly 84,000 acres (34,000 hectares) and spread beyond national forest boundaries. Several communities in Wasco County were under “go now” evacuation orders, and the nearby town of Dufur was advised to prepare for immediate evacuation.

An ice-capped volcano stands at the center of the image, its surrounding terrain blanketed in brown-gray smoke.
August 4, 2026

Roughly 100 miles to the north in Washington, Mount Rainier—the state’s tallest peak at 14,411 feet (4,392 meters)—was wreathed in smoke. No major fires burned nearby when this photo was taken on August 4. Instead, smoke drifted in from fires in central and eastern Washington, carried by winds blowing from the east due to a high-pressure system offshore. That day, the National Park Service reported that air quality in the park reached unhealthy levels due to elevated concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5).

Several days later, the Grand Park 2 fire was observed burning within park boundaries, about 3 miles north of the Sunrise Visitor Center. As of August 12, the fire had burned 223 acres (90 hectares) and was uncontained; the cause was yet undetermined.  

Above-normal fire potential was expected to persist across the Northwest through August, according to an outlook from the National Interagency Fire Center. Warm, dry weather—conditions influenced by El Niño—combined with cured fuels to set the stage for large, long-burning fires following lightning- or human-caused ignitions.

Astronaut photographs ISS075-E-1705 and ISS075-E-2221 were acquired on July 31, 2026, and August 4, 2026, respectively, with a Nikon Z9 digital camera using a focal length of 400 millimeters. They are provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center. The images were taken by a member of the Expedition 75 crew. The images have been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

Downloads

An ice-capped volcano stands at the center of the image, its surrounding terrain blanketed in brown-gray smoke.

Mt. Rainier: August 4, 2026

JPEG (10.14 MB)

An ice-capped volcano stands in the bottom-left corner, with a wide plume of brown-gray smoke filling most of the rest of the frame.

Mt. Hood: July 31, 2026

JPEG (7.44 MB)

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Disaster hits home: How Amazon and other companies are responding to Washington state wildfires

✇GeekWire
By: Kurt Schlosser
Amazon has 12 Disaster Relief hubs around the world — including this one in California handling wildfire relief supplies — designed to respond quickly to natural disasters with delivery of emergency materials. (Amazon Photo)

Amazon’s Disaster Relief team responds with emergency supplies to support victims of crises around the world. Recent efforts have provided aid following a hurricane in Jamaica, earthquakes in Venezuela and wildfires in France.

Devastation from wildfires on the eastern side of Washington hit especially close to home — for Amazon and number of companies in the state.

The Seattle-based tech giant announced this week that it is donating a range of supplies to assist nearly 65,000 people who have been evacuated from their homes in the Spokane area, as crews battle three major wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses.

“Washington is home to Amazon and to tens of thousands of our employees. As the situation evolves, we remain committed to supporting our employees and the wider community affected by the Spokane wildfires,” Abe Diaz, Amazon’s head of Disaster Relief, said in a statement.

Through its work with the American Red Cross, Save the Children, and local nonprofits in Spokane, Amazon is helping to donate and deliver more than 26,000 emergency supplies, including air purifiers, masks, diapers, and hygiene kits for displaced families. Heavy-duty gloves, boots, and hydration packets for firefighters are also arriving this week, and a second wave of donated supplies will follow.

Amazon relies on 12 Disaster Relief hubs across seven countries, and aid for Spokane is coming from a hub that opened in California’s San Bernardino Valley in 2024.

The global network first launched in the U.S. in 2021 and enables the company to respond to natural disasters in just a couple of days or less. The company says that since 2017, it has donated and delivered more than 30 million essential supplies in response to over 200 disasters around the world. 

In a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday, Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon, said the fires created “a living nightmare” in Eastern Washington.

“Every natural disaster is one too many, but the latest one hits especially hard,” she wrote.

Amazon is not alone in providing aid.

Boeing announced that it’s donating $250,000 from its Charitable Trust to assist those impacted by Washington wildfires.

The aerospace company said the funding will support the Innovia Foundation of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, to help nonprofits, businesses and community organizations provide relief. 

Boeing employs more than 65,000 people in Washington. The company said it will match qualifying employee contributions made to charitable gift match programs in support of relief efforts.

F5 is assisting its employees and others in the broader Spokane community impacted by the fires, the company told GeekWire Wednesday.

The Seattle-based networking and security giant has a significant presence in Spokane Valley.

“The safety and well-being of our team members are our highest priorities during this challenging time of rapid evacuations and profound uncertainty,” an F5 spokesperson said, adding that the company is committed to ensuring employees have the resources they need to recover and rebuild.

To assist those directly affected, F5 said it is actively mobilizing support through two primary avenues:

  • Direct Employee Assistance: Offering immediate aid to impacted employees through the F5er Emergency Relief Fund. Fully sustained by F5, the fund delivers direct financial relief to employees facing hardships, emergency evacuations, and long-term recovery efforts due to natural disasters.
  • Community Donation Matching: F5 launched dedicated donation campaigns to nonprofits actively providing on-the-ground relief and matches employee donations and volunteer time — up to $5,000 USD annually per employee. 
A visualizer from Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, which uses satellite imagery to show buildings in the Spokane, Wash., area damaged by wildfire. (Image via data.humdata.org)

Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab is putting its technology to use in the form of a building damage visualizer that uses satellite imagery to show the effects of the Spokane fires.

The lab supports HASTE (High-speed Assessment and Satellite Tracking for Emergencies), an open-source, no-code platform that turns vast amounts of data into actionable insights. Responders can assess destruction faster and more accurately, supporting relief and recovery efforts.

So far in the Spokane area, 16,171 buildings have been analyzed, with 624 buildings (3.9%) identified as damaged. Another 49 (0.30%) could not be analyzed due to smoke, haze, or clouds. Microsoft stresses that the results are considered preliminary and on-the-ground validation will be needed for an accurate understanding of the full impact.

Microsoft also told GeekWire that an employee giving campaign was launched to raise funds for the American Red Cross’s wildfire relief fund and the Innovia Foundation’s Spokane Complex Wildfire Response Fund. “With all employee donations fully matched by Microsoft, we remain committed to assisting those directly affected,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

T-Mobile is providing a range of services to help keep communities, customers, and first responders stay connected in the wake of the disaster. These include:

  • Free Wi-Fi, device charging and supplies at its Five Mile Plaza Experience Store at 1910 W. Francis Ave. in Spokane.
  • Unlimited talk, text and data to T‑Mobile, Metro by T‑Mobile, USCellular, Assurance Wireless, Mint and Ultra customers in impacted areas who don’t already have it. 
  • Activation of T-Satellite with Starlink in impacted areas, enabling compatible devices to send basic text messages and text-to-911 if traditional connectivity is disrupted, while also delivering Wireless Emergency Alerts. 
  • Wi‑Fi, device charging support and power packs at the Spokane Convention Center.

The Bellevue-based wireless provider, which is relaying updates online at its Emergency Response Hub, said it is also working to ensure that cell tower sites remain in operation after having restored service at each site. And T-Mobile is coordinating with state and local agencies to assess community needs and identify additional opportunities to support first responders and residents.

Starbucks is providing support through its foundation to the American Red Cross and World Central Kitchen, and the Seattle-based coffee giant said it’s continuing to assess additional opportunities to support recovery efforts in Spokane. 

Customers at Starbucks coffeehouses across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska are invited to join in giving to the Red Cross’s Washington Wildfires 2026 campaign, a spokesperson told GeekWire.

Starbucks partners (employees) who are looking to help during times of need, or year-round, can contribute to the Caring Unites Partners (CUP) Fund, a financial assistance program funded by partners, for partners.

The company is also offering a double match for Starbucks partner donations made to American Red Cross – Disaster Relief; Feeding America – Disaster Response; and World Central Kitchen – Disaster Relief Efforts.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs announced that his office has activated its Disaster Relief Center (DRC) to encourage donations for communities hit by wildfires across Central and Eastern Washington.

The DRC operates as a specialized program under the Office of the Secretary of State’s Combined Fund Drive (CFD). The portal aggregates verified, registered crisis-relief nonprofits so state employees, retirees, and the broader public can quickly connect with vetted organizations providing immediate aid.

“In times of crisis, I know Washingtonians’ first thought is ‘How can I help?'” Hobbs said in a statement. “Anyone looking for a way to support our neighbors in Eastern Washington can feel confident their donations will go directly to organizations doing life-saving work on the ground.”

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown’s office is also encouraging people to take precautions to ensure wildfire relief donations go to reputable charities.

“The destruction in Spokane is heartbreaking, and generous people across our state want to help,” Brown said in a news release Wednesday. “It’s important to give safely to ensure your hard-earned money is helping those in need.”

The city of Spokane is accepting donations through its H.O.M.E. Starts Here Fund, which had attracted $234,000 from more than 1,100 donors by Wednesday.

The AG’s office is providing online tips to guide those giving to non-profits or charities.

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