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Wildland fire activity in Canada ramped up in July 2026, a time of year when lightning ignitions typically increase, according to a seasonal outlook published by several North American fire agencies. The blazes sent smoke plumes pouring across the U.S. and Canada, affecting air quality in both countries.  

This animation tracks brown carbon, the organic aerosols emitted by fires that give smoke plumes their characteristic yellow, orange, and brown tint. Brown carbon is a major component of a fire’s PM_2.5 emissions, a type of air pollution that can aggravate cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. Here, the plume drifts across North American skies from July 14 through July 20, 2026.

Data for the animation come from a version of the GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) model, which assimilates data from satellites, aircraft, and ground-based observing systems. In addition to satellite observations of aerosols and fires, the model also incorporates meteorological data such as air temperature, moisture, and winds to project the plume’s behavior.

On July 14, at the start of the animation, numerous fires had already cropped up, including more than 180 in Ontario and several in northern Minnesota. Winds carried the smoke southeast, and by July 15, skies turned hazy and air quality declined from southern Ontario in Canada to the Upper Midwest and Northeast in the U.S. July 16 and 17 saw air quality in many areas continue to plummet, including in Detroit, where it stayed in the hazardous range for several consecutive days. Toronto, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., saw air quality ranging from unhealthy to hazardous.

On July 19 and 20, smoke continued to affect air quality downwind, including in the Great Lakes region, according to the National Weather Service. Storms began clearing it away in parts of the East, where air quality improved to good or moderate. Meanwhile, fires in the Pacific Northwest began degrading air quality there. 

The brown carbon shown in this animation represents organic carbon that comes specifically from wildfire smoke. Wildfires also emit black carbon, or soot, which contributes to their PM_2.5 output. Black carbon has long served as a tracer for smoke plumes, but human sources—such as vehicle exhaust and industrial combustion—produce it too, blending in with the black carbon from fires. The GEOS model has been able to make that distinction for brown carbon since February 2026, when an update enabled it to split organic carbon into its anthropogenic and biomass-burning components.

NASA Earth Observatory animation by Lauren Dauphin, using GEOS-FP data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

References & Resources

• The Conversation (2026, July 16) Yes, breathing wildfire smoke can harm your health – here’s what you can do to protect yourself. Accessed July 21, 2026.
• NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (2026, February 19) Splitting Anthropogenic and Biomass Burning Sources of Organic Carbon in GOCART-2G. Accessed July 21, 2026.
• NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (2026, July 20) Long-range Transport of 2026 Canadian Wildfire Smoke into the United States (July 14-20, 2026). Accessed July 21, 2026.
• National Interagency Fire Center, Natural Resources Canada, and Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (2026, July 14) North American Seasonal Fire Assessment and Outlook. Accessed July 21, 2026.
• The New York Times (2026, July 19) When Will the Wildfire Smoke Clear? Accessed July 21, 2026.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2026, July 14-20) AirNow: Interactive Map of Air Quality. Accessed July 21, 2026.

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NISAR’s L-Band Radar Reveals ‘Hummingbird’ in Antarctica

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NISAR’s L-Band Radar Reveals ‘Hummingbird’ in Antarctica

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Data from the Earth-orbiting U.S.-India NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite’s L-band radar was used to produce an image of Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja — a mountaintop in East Antarctica — poking out amid a stream of ice flowing northeast to the ocean. The obstruction causes stresses in the ice, heavily fracturing the surrounding surfaces with deep cracks, called crevasses, which show as sharp green lines in the image. Produced in August 2025, the image has been nicknamed “the hummingbird” by NISAR scientists. 

The colors show differences in the way polarized microwave signals, which vibrate in different directions, interact with and reflect from the ice. Over Antarctica, NISAR transmits radar waves toward Earth with a horizontal polarization. The orientation of the signals that return, either horizontal, vertical, or both, provide clues about the object or surface that reflected them.

Signals that come back with a horizontal polarization likely bounced off a more regular surface, such as smooth ice. Those signals appear magenta in the image. Signals that return with vertical polarization may have refracted as they partially penetrated the ice or scattered at different angles as they reflected off irregular surfaces, like the faces of crevasses. Called volume scattering, these observations are displayed in green.

The white represents areas in which both magenta and green signals scatter back strongly, a possible indication that there is an equal blend of surface and volume scattering.

Figure A is an annotated version of image.

Managed by Caltech, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the United States component of the project and provided the satellite’s L-band SAR and antenna reflector. The spacecraft bus and its S-band SAR were provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation. The NISAR satellite is the first to carry two SAR instruments at different wavelengths, collecting data using the spacecraft’s giant drum-shaped reflector, which measures 39 feet (12 meters) wide — the largest radar antenna reflector NASA has ever sent into space.

To learn more about NISAR, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/nisar/

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Media are invited to join NASA for a virtual news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, July 29, to preview the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission, scheduled to launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday, Aug. 30.

NASA will stream this event live through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online: https://www.nasa.gov/live.

Participants in the briefing, who will provide an overview of the mission and its status, include:

• Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
• Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, NASA Goddard
• Jeremy Perkins, Roman telescope integration and test scientist, NASA Goddard

Media interested in participating by phone must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the briefing to Rob Garner at rob.garner@nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.  

Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a deep, panoramic view of the cosmos, generating never-before-seen pictures that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe. The observatory will usher in a new era of cosmic surveys, unveiling troves of celestial objects and shedding light on some of the universe’s most profound mysteries, including phenomena we can’t see. Roman also will showcase cutting-edge technology, including a test of the most advanced technology ever flown in space to directly image planets around nearby stars, a key step in NASA’s search for life on other worlds.

The Roman telescope is managed at NASA Goddard with participation by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a team of scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc., L3Harris Technologies, and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging. Contributions to Roman also are made by ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

For more information about NASA’s Roman telescope, visit:

https://nasa.gov/roman

-end-

Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov

Claire Andreoli / Rob Garner
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940 / 301-286-5687
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov / rob.garner@nasa.gov

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NISAR’s L-Band Radar Reveals ‘Hummingbird’ in Antarctica

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Image Details

Scientists used data from the L-band radar aboard the U.S.-India Earth-orbiting NISAR satellite to produce this image of Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja, a mountaintop in East Antarctica, poking out amid a stream of ice flowing northeast to the ocean. The annotations point out the sharp green lines that indicate ice fractured with crevasses. Magenta represents more regular surfaces, such as smooth ice. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As of July 20, the public can access data from the two powerful radar instruments aboard the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite. Teams in the United States and India will release files processed from the satellite’s L-band and S-band radars on an ongoing basis, helping researchers and other users track the movement of Earth’s land and ice masses, monitor changes in ecosystems like forests and wetlands, and respond to natural hazards such as landslides and earthquakes. 

The release comes as NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) prepare to celebrate the first anniversary of NISAR’s July 30, 2025, launch from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Since that time, the mission engineering and science teams have been busy calibrating instrumentation, refining algorithms, and monitoring nearly all the planet’s land- and ice-covered surfaces twice every 12 days. Along the way, the team has captured scenes from around the globe — urban street grids, agricultural fields, landslides, earthquakes, and sinking land in Mexico City.  

An early image released Tuesday revealed the fractured, barren surface of an Antarctic landscape in stark detail. In a merging of science and serendipity, it also resembles something else entirely: a hummingbird. 

Despite its otherworldly quality, the Antarctic image shows a very real geographical feature called Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja, a mountaintop in East Antarctica, poking out amid a stream of ice flowing northeast to the ocean. As the moving glacier passes the obstruction, the mountain’s topography causes stresses in the ice, heavily fracturing the surrounding surfaces with deep cracks, called crevasses, which show as sharp green lines in the image.  

“First, it’s a beautiful image, with rich details of features that provide insights to how the glacier is moving. Then, because radar can often see through snow and deep into the ice, NISAR can observe fundamentally different properties of Antarctic ice than can be seen in optical imagery,” said Seongsu Jeong, the signal analysis engineer who produced the image at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “With NISAR we’re seeing what’s hidden beneath the surface.” 

Story in magenta, green 

Generated with measurements that NISAR’s L-band instrument gathered in August 2025, as U.S. and Indian mission teams tested the satellite’s systems, the “hummingbird” exemplifies one of the young mission’s hallmarks: intricately detailed imagery that is both informative and eye-catching.  

The colors show differences in the way polarized microwave signals, which vibrate in different directions, interact with and reflect from the ice. Over Antarctica, NISAR transmits radar waves toward Earth with a horizontal polarization. The orientation of the signals that return — either horizontal, vertical, or both — provide clues about the object or surface that reflected them. 

Signals that come back with a horizontal polarization likely bounced off a more regular surface, such as smooth ice. Those signals appear magenta in the image. Signals that return with vertical polarization may have refracted as they partially penetrated the snow and ice or scattered at different angles as they reflected off irregular surfaces, such as the faces of crevasses. Called volume scattering, these observations are displayed in green. 

The white represents areas in which magenta and green signals scatter back strongly, a possible indication that there is an equal blend of surface and volume scattering. 

The same scene viewed in optical light is almost entirely white with ice and snow. Slight shadows and rippling indicate the presence of the mountaintop, and textures in the surrounding area suggest the ice is not completely smooth. 

Access to data 

The NISAR satellite is the first free-flying space mission to feature two radar instruments: an L-band system and an S-band system. The systems are complementary due to their differing wavelengths. For example, the longer-wave L-band can pass through tree canopies, imaging the ground beneath. Meanwhile, depending on leaf sizes, S-band can collect observations of those canopies. 

The Indian science team, based at ISRO’s Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, recently started releasing S-band data via the Bhoonidhi portal.  

On July 20, the U.S. side of the mission started releasing calibrated products continuously for all L-band measurements collected since June 17. By the end of the year, the team expects to have released all data acquired earlier during science operations. The NISAR project science team previously had two limited releases of L-band data, the first in January of about 25 sample products and a release in February of thousands of pre-calibrated products. 

As with the earlier releases, data users will be able to download the latest files at the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center in Fairbanks, which hosts and distributes all NASA synthetic aperture radar data.  

The NISAR mission’s science data output is vast, on the order of dozens of terabytes a day, due to the satellite’s frequent coverage of nearly all the land and ice surfaces on Earth. It scans from within a few degrees of the South Pole in Antarctica to 77.5 degrees north latitude, above the Arctic Circle. 

More about NISAR 

Managed by Caltech, JPL leads the U.S. component of the project and provided the satellite’s L-band SAR and antenna reflector. The spacecraft bus and its S-band SAR were provided by ISRO. 

The NISAR satellite is the first to carry two SAR instruments at different wavelengths, collecting data using the spacecraft’s giant drum-shaped reflector, which measures 39 feet (12 meters) wide — the largest radar antenna reflector NASA has sent into space. 

To learn more about NISAR, visit: 

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/nisar/

Media Contacts

Andrew Wang / Andrew Good 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
626-379-6874 / 818-393-2433 
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov 

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NASA Langley’s “Stars, Stripes, and Supernovas – Symphony Under the Stars” event brought employees, families, and community members together for an evening filled with music, connection, and celebration.  

Organizers planned the event, which took place July 16, to mark the 250^th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. 

The evening featured a dynamic mix of performances from an orchestra that included NASA Langley employees and members of the Williamsburg Youth Orchestra, as well as smaller group performances from employees and special guest artist Karl Werne.  

“It’s fun to bring people together, to share their diverse talents in order to create something that’s meaningful – and in this case something that was very beautiful too,” said Jennifer Kibler, deputy director of the Research Directorate at NASA Langley.  

The orchestra played a selection of patriotic favorites and space-inspired pieces that highlighted the creativity and talent within the community. “America the Beautiful,” “God Bless America,” and “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” from Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite “The Planets” were among the songs they performed.  

The event, which also took place just one day before NASA Langley’s 109^th birthday, served as a reminder of the spirit that defines the center—scientists, engineers, communicators, and staff coming together to celebrate not only NASA’s mission, but the people who make that mission possible.  

“This was a big team effort,” said Nicole Oman, administrative management specialist with the Research Directorate. “It wouldn’t have been a success without the contributions of every single person.”