Gas flaring in Iraq.

Radiating right now

No collection cycle has completed yet on this server. This is not a statement that nothing is radiating — it means nothing has been looked at yet.

Questions readers ask

What is gas flaring?

It is the controlled burning of natural gas that comes up with oil, when there is no pipeline or plant to carry it away. The flame burns continuously at the top of a stack, which is why satellites see it on almost every pass.

Why is gas flared instead of used?

Usually for lack of infrastructure: the gas surfaces where oil is produced, far from any network able to gather, treat and transport it. It is also used as a safety device, to release pressure in refineries and processing plants.

Where is the most gas flared?

The World Bank names Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Mexico, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria and the United States among the largest flaring countries. The map above shows the individual sites that were detected radiating.

What this measurement is, and is not

• Radiative power is the infrared a sensor received at the instant it passed overhead. It is not a measure of emissions, of pollution, or of any contribution to climate change — a solar farm can top the list on reflected sunlight alone.
• A source absent from this page is not a source at rest: a polar satellite passes twice a day, clouds hide the ground, and a site that was hot between two overpasses was never seen.
• The site catalog is a snapshot, rebuilt by hand. A plant that opened after the last build is missing from it, and a plant that closed is still in it.

Where the data comes from

The detections are NASA FIRMS (LANCE / EOSDIS). The sites are not NASA's data and are not ours: they come from the Smithsonian Institution for volcanoes, the World Bank with NOAA and the Colorado School of Mines for flares, the World Resources Institute for power plants, the Spatial Finance Initiative for cement, steel and petrochemicals, Global Energy Monitor for steel, and the U.S. Geological Survey for mineral sites.