On August 22, 2004, clouds and smoke swirled over the islands that sit between Australia and Asia, at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. Large islands pictured here are Borneo (right), Java (bottom), and Sumatra (left) At top left is the southern tip of mainland Malaysia. In each of these places, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite detected actively burning fires (marked in red). Over the weekend of August 21, the haze in Singapore (at the southern tip of mainland Malaysia), at least some of which was smoke from the fires, was so severe that air traffic was interrupted.
NASA image by Jesse Allen, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC
