A deadly wildfire in Los Angeles (LA), California, is spreading rapidly. The fire, which started in Pacific Palisades Park on the LA coastline on the morning of the 7th, grew to about 12 square kilometers in size in less than a day. Already, tens of thousands of residents have evacuated, and the damage has increased due to strong winds.
This wildfire is large enough to be clearly visible from artificial satellites orbiting the Earth. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is monitoring the wildfire using two types of satellites. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and the Polar-Orbiting Satellite Systems (JPSS) have been deployed for monitoring this wildfire.
JPSS orbits at an altitude of 824 kilometers above the Earth, while the GOES satellite is positioned in geostationary orbit at about 35,786 kilometers above the Earth, observing the same points. Using the next-generation Earth observation equipment on both satellites, real-time images of fire and smoke dispersion and movement paths can be clearly observed.
In a time-lapse video captured by NOAA's GOES-18 satellite, one can see how the location of the fire, the intensity of the flames, and the direction of the smoke columns changed. The instruments on NOAA's JPSS-2 satellite, NOAA-21, captured images showing the hot spots (fire points) caused by this wildfire and the smoke columns extending over the ocean.
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellite also captured images of the Palisades wildfire shortly after it ignited at 10:45 a.m. on the 7th.
The National Weather Service has issued a fire risk warning for Southern California. The combination of the strong 'Santa Ana winds' blowing in Southern California and record-low rainfall has exacerbated the damage from the wildfire. There has been almost no rainfall in Southern California since October of last year. At LA Airport, the rainfall recorded since October 1 has reached the lowest levels since records began in 1944.