The Fourmile Canyon Fire in Colorado, and 14 More of the Summer's Biggest Wildfires, as Seen from Space

The largest of several fires burning on Madeira, the Portugese island in the Atlantic, consumed Funchal Ecological Park, a 3.9-square mile preserve designed, somewhat ironically, to restore the island's native wildlife. It remains to be seen whether fire, photographed here Aug. 13, will aid the restoration, as it does in some ecosystems.

Two big fires, seen here Aug. 13, were emitting plumes of smoke big enough to be visible from space. To the north, fires burned in Peneda Geres National Park, Portugal’s only national park. And to the south, another set of fires burned in Serra da Estrela natural park, in the highest mountains in Portugal.

In August, huge plumes of smoke were twirling up from throughout Brazil. Here, fires are seen along the Madeira River, the Amazon's largest tributary, in the vicinity of Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia.

In this closeup image of the Amazon fires, the herringbone pattern that is a hallmark of deforestation is evident. The fires are set deliberately to clear land, contributing to the loss of one of the world's largest rainforests, and turning an atmospheric carbon sink into a carbon source.

Across Brazil's southwest border, the story is much the same. Bolivia, seen here on Aug. 16, along with adjacent portions of Brazil, appears to be almost entirely aflame. "Gray-white smoke hangs over Bolivia. The thickest smoke is concentrated along the Andes Mountains, which are forming a barrier trapping most of the smoke in the east," NASA writes. "Some smoke seeps into the dry highlands west of the mountains through valleys."

This image, centered on Paraguay, shows how many small fires can add up: fires in Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and especially Bolivia are spitting out so much smoke that, in this Aug. 23 image, a 1,550-mile-long stretch of land is clouded by smoke. A new study found that more than half the newly farmed land in the tropics, from 1980 to 2000, was formerly virgin forest.

Although the fire season in the U.S. has been significantly less destructive than recent years, the same is not the case in Canada. In parts of August, three-quarters of British Columbia were under threat of fire. Here, in an Aug. 13 photo, "east of the snowcapped Coast Mountains, numerous fires, many of them clustered into large groups, send smoke plumes toward the south-southwest and west-southwest," in NASA's words. "Over the Pacific Ocean, smoke has coalesced into a large plume that blows past the northwestern tip of Vancouver Island. Over the Coast Mountains, skies are clear. The clear-sky gap between the active fires and the plume over the Pacific might result from a temporary shift in wind direction."

While the air over Moscow cleared after a month of smokey, smoggy skies, not all of Russia was cleared of fires, or their impacts. Here, east of Moscow, several fires send up so much smoke on Aug. 15 that the city of Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia's fourth-largest city with a population of 1.4 million people, is completely covered.

Several large fires, the View Lake, Scott Mountain and White Lightning Complex fires, to the left in this Aug. 25 image, were burning in Oregon, along with several unnamed fires.

One thousand miles away from Moscow, many large wildfires burned through the Ural Mountains, as seen in this Aug. 15 image.

First reported July 25, the Dominic Point fire in Montana, and the International Space Station took this picture just an hour after that first report, when the plume of smoke already stretched for five miles. A combination of high heat, low humidity and abundant deadwood have helped this fire burn nearly 900 acres of Bitterroot National Forest in far western Montana, about 12 miles northeast of Hamilton, and roughly that far from the Idaho border. Global warming is making those conditions that set the stage for large wildfires more common. See 4 ways global warming increases fire risk.

The Bull Fire has burned over 16,000 acres of Sequoia National Forest, destroyed several homes and forced the evacuations of many people since starting July 26. To help orient the viewer, here's how NASA describes this image: "The Sequoia National Forest is at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada range. In this image, the mountains are covered in deep green forest. The snow-capped peaks north of the fire are dingy brown and partially obscured by smoke. To the west of the mountains is San Joaquin Valley, the southern half of the Central Valley. The valley is checkered with green farm fields and dotted with gray cities and towns. In the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada, the land to the east is mostly desert brown and tan. This area is Death Valley National Park, which is part of the Mojave Desert. The Nevada state line cuts across the upper right corner of the image."

In the far north of Canada's remote Saskatchewan province, many wildfires are burning. To date, nearly 3.5 million acres of forest has burned in Saskatchewan this fire season, more than five times as much as the 25-year average for the same annual period. This image was captured July 13.

In Eastern China, many fires were burning in early July when NASA's Terra satellite captured this image. Most likely agricultural fires set on purpose south of Beijing, they nonetheless contribute to air pollution that has made China's air quality notoriously bad.

Outside Moscow, multiple peat bog fires have been burning throughout July. NASA caught this satellite image July 28. The peat bog fires are a consequence of record-setting heat, which has been blamed for thousands of deaths (including drownings from people attempting to escape the heat). The fires contribute to unhealthy air pollution that the heat already exacerbates.

On the other side of the continent, drought and heat also contributed to extreme wildfires, the smoke from which extended into the Bering Sea (bottom right). Here's how NASA describes the image: "This image shows the region north of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The largest collection of fires is clustered around a river that feeds into the Penzhinskaya Guba, part of the Sea of Okhotsk. Smaller clusters of fires also burn in the northwest, northeast, and south. Most of the fires send their smoke toward the northeast, but east of the burning fires, winds carry the smoke toward the southeast. Off the coast, the smoke plume is thick enough to completely hide parts of the Bering Sea." The red outlined areas indicate areas of extreme ground-level heat, most likely the individual fires causing smoke.

Another set of fires in Western Russia, these in the forests along the Volga River, burned hot in early July. As in the last image, the red outlines indicate unusually warm ground-level temperatures, a hallmark of fire. This image was captured July 2.