File:Fires in the Philippines (MODIS 2019-03-11).jpg

English: Smoke from several wildfires hung over the mountains in northern Luzon, Philippines in early March 2019. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the scene on March 3.

On March 8, local media reported that more than 140,000 hectares of forest in different provinces in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) have been burned by fire since the start of the new year. The Bureau of Fire Prevention in the region was quoted as saying there had been an “alarming” 90 incidents of forest fire from January to March, an increase from last year’s number of 87. The dry season, which runs from November to May, has been an extremely dry one especially since the first of the year across much of northern Luzon, creating ripe conditions for fire.

While wildfire reports are the highest in the Cordillera, some fires are burning across the island. At high resolution, several red “hot spots” can be seen dotted across the island. Each of these represents an area where the thermal bands on the instrument have detected high temperatures. When combined with typical smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for actively burning fire.