Saturday, December 07, 2019

How Big Are the Australian Bushfires?



The bushfires which are currently burning in eastern Australia have destroyed nearly 480 homes. According to the Guardian newspaper the combined size of the different bushfires is at least 2.2m hectares. To illustrate how big 2.2m hectares is the Guardian has created an interactive map which allows you to view 2.2m hectares overlaid on top of a number of global cities.

The How big are the fires burning on the east coast of Australia? interactive is a very simple map which consists of a square polygon overlaid on New York, Paris, London and a number of Australian cities. The map also includes the option to view the size of the total fires in both Queensland and New South Wales separately, as smaller squares overlaid on the same global cities.

The animated Gif above was made using imagery from the Himawari-8 satellite. The imagery consists of a number of satellite images, taken 10 minutes apart, which were captured between around midday and 4pm on 12th December.

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