Anything on Earth that can be seen from space is always vast in size, and often moreso than the naked eye can comprehend. It is oceans and rivers, countries and islands, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef or the Pyramid of Giza. And so, when smoke from a fire, or many fires, is visible on the satellite images of the world’s leading space station, you can count on it being something phenomenal in scale.
In July of this year, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (known as the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, or INPE, inpe.br) reported substantially increased rates of forest fires across the Amazon rainforest. However, it was only when NASA corroborated these findings with their own satellite images of smoke darkening the skies above Sao Paolo, a city thousands of kilometres from the site of the fires, that the eyes of the world were drawn to the plight of the world’s largest rainforest.