English: For several months chocolate-colored smoke plumes have shifted with the winds over northern Iraq. As early as June 14, 2016, NASA satellites have documented dense plumes located about 50 km (30 mi) south of Mosul. There appear to be multiple sources of fire, mostly likely oil wells from the Oyyarah oil field. On September 11, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured a true-color image of a thick plume of oily smoke blowing southeast over the Tigris River, before spreading over the landscape. It rises from a large red hotspot - an area where the thermal sensors on the instrument detected temperatures higher than background. When combined with smoke, such hotspots mark actively burning fire. The pall of smoke from burning oil wells is a consequence of ongoing war in this region