Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece endured another week of blistering heat as the heat wave persisted around the Mediterranean. The high temperatures have been accompanied by forest fires from Portugal to Greece and along the northern coast of Africa in Algeria. Warm air temperatures are reflected in hot ground temperatures in this surface temperature image, made from data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite between July 20 and July 26, 2005. The yellow and pink tones that represent the warmest temperatures cover southern Europe and are beginning to creep into parts of northern Europe. Sections of Spain and Portugal and much of northern Africa are spotted with the warmest yellow representing land temperatures as high as 60 degrees Celsius.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data provided courtesy of Dr. Z. Wan, MODIS Land Science Team.
