English: A vicious wildfire season continued to roar across Canada in late July 2023, turning forests to ash and filling the atmosphere with smoke.

On July 27, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image centered on Northwest Territories, a vast area of forest and tundra in northwestern Canada. The region is bordered by Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia in the south. The northern section of all three are seen in this image, although few fires are visible in these provinces. To the east is Nunavut and Yukon sits to the west. The Northwest Territories extend far above the Arctic Circle.

Dozens of red hotspots mark actively burning fires. Almost all fires visible in this image are located in southeastern Northern Territories. The fires are pumping rivers of smoke into the atmosphere. This smoke likely has merged with continuing wildfires in other provinces to create a thick blanket that obscures the land from view.

On July 29, the government on Northwest Territories advised that 146 total fires were active, with 2 new fires igniting within the last 24 hours. There have been 171 fires this year, with 25 wildfires declared out. There has been 1,513,818 hectares burned since January 1 just in Northwest Territories—an area roughly the size of Portugal.