Iraq: This Oil Fire in Iraq Has Been Burning for 3 Months

Sep 2, 2016 | Marisa Gertz, Time
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NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite first captured images of the black smoke plumes south of Mosul in early June. Since then, the fire has steadily continued to burn. The satellite images show the plume shifting with the winds up until the most recent image, taken on August 17th. Different kinds of fuel and other factors, such as humidity and wind, produce different colors of smoke, said Ralph Kahn, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Natural gas fires produce grayish smoke while oil fires, like this one, burn black.