USING SATELLITE DATA TO MONITOR THE 1991 KUWAIT OIL FIRES

The Kuwait oil fires, considered one of the world's greatest environme ntal disasters, were created during the 1991 Gulf War. The thermal inf rared bands for digitally processed Advanced Very High Resolution Radi ometer on board National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration polar orbiting satellites and Landsat Thematic Mapper image data were succes sfully used to detect and monitor the temporal and spatial changes ass ociated with the Kuwait oil fires and associated smoke plumes. The oil fires were first detected on satellite imagery on January 24 and they peaked in the last week of February, 1991, which coincided with the A llied Forces ground offensive attack to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi Army. The satellite images in conjunction with field data were used t o identify fires that were hottest and associated with high pressure z ones and wells that were forming pools of oil.