Plume from Mumbai's Burning Landfill Seen from Space

[sue4e3]

The end of January had a smoky surprise for Mumbai, India, after the city's largest landfill caught fire and burned for four days. The billowing smoke was so thick that the massive plume could be seen from space.

Mumbai's Deonar dumping ground extends across 0.5 square miles (1.3 square kilometers) near Thane Creek. Each day, the landfill receives more than 8.1 million pounds (3.7 million kilograms) of trash, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. All that garbage gets tossed into towering piles that measure up to 100 feet (30 meters) in places, which is equivalent to the height of a nine-story building, NASA said.

Large-scale fires are never good, but when trash burns, it can be even more problematic. For one, landfill fires are difficult to extinguish because they are fueled by highly flammable substances, such as methane, which is produced by decomposing organic materials, according to NASA. And the Mumbai fire was sizeable enough to be spotted by the Earth-watching Landsat 8 satellite. [In Photos: World's Most Polluted Places]
http://www.livescience.com/53758-mumbai-landfill-fire-photo.html

[friendly_iconoclast]

1. The image from Landsat 8:

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