TORONTO -- A new satellite image from NASA shows the West Coast of the U.S. and parts of Canada covered in smoke from growing wildfires while Hurricane Sally makes landfall in the Gulf Coast and several other hurricanes converge in the Atlantic Ocean.
The new image, captured Sept. 15 by NASA's Aqua satellite, shows the startling effect climate change is having on natural disasters, and scientists say these disasters may worsen or become more frequent from the continued burning of coal, oil and gas into Earth鈥檚 atmosphere.
The true-colour image shows wildfires along the West Coast, smoke from those fires covering North America and several hurricanes moving in on the continent from different angles.
NASA that capturing so many disasters in a single photo is rare.
"Satellite images are generated every single day, in fact multiple times from multiple satellites, but it is still very unusual to capture an image of so many hazards in one image," the space agency said.
NASA noted that the red points in the image show areas that are "significantly higher in temperature than the areas around it" and are indicative of fires. The agency added that these points are most pronounced up and down the U.S. west coast, but blanket the entire country.
The wildfires have reached record-breaking proportions in California, Oregon and Washington and the satellite image shows smoke from these areas starting to spreading across parts of Canada.
The smoke from the wildfires is so dense and huge it has even spread as far as to Europe, according to observations from the EU's .
On the other side of the satellite image, Hurricane Sally is pictured making landfall at the centre of the Gulf Coast while four other tropical storms appear to surround the U.S.
NASA said Hurricane Karina is seen on the left hand side of the image, moving away from the Baja California area. Hurricane Teddy is in the lower right-hand corner, pictured east of the Leeward Islands as it travels northwest, while Hurricane Paulette sits near Bermuda.
However, no landmasses are currently threatened by these additional hurricanes, the space agency said.
While Hurricane Sally has weakened to a tropical depression, the slow-moving storm has already caused devastation across the Florida Panhandle and south Alabama with catastrophic flooding expected to spread to Georgia and the Carolinas.
