NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite, the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Edited from story by Kathryn Hansen.
It was not even summertime, but already the United Kingdom saw a significant number of wildfires. The map shows cumulative fire detections from January 1 through April 30, 2019. Each red dot depicts one fire. Notable fires that year include blazes in England’s Ashdown Forest—the setting that inspired the Hundred Acre Wood in A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories. High fire counts and warm, dry weather have been a continuing trend. By the end of April 2019 the United Kingdom had already seen more fires through that month than in the record-breaking year of 2018.