NASA's Earth Observatory has released an incredible image taken nine kilometers above Washington state.
It looks like an image from some other, fantastic world. But we assure you, the photo was taken on our planet - more precisely, above it. The pilot of the NASA flying laboratory captured the flight through the pyrocumulonimbus, or "fire cloud".
Such clouds occur when smoke and moisture from forest fires rise up into the lower stratosphere. Although pyrocumulonimbus is beautiful, it can be very dangerous: its effect can be compared to the eruption of volcanic ash. The cloud, which the NASA pilot flew into, was formed by a massive fire on the Indian Reservation in Washington state, which covered an area of 182 square kilometers.
View from above. Photo: NASA.
NASA is conducting research on "clouds of fire" under the FIREX-AQ program. Specialists of the Aerospace Agency take air samples, measure various indicators and monitor the spread of combustion products with atmospheric currents. The goal of the program is to assess the global impact of individual wildfires on the US ecology as a whole.
