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 Kuwait Oil Field Fires (1991)

 
In his effort to cause the most damage as he retreated from Kuwait, Sadaam Hussein ordered that Kuwait's oil fields be ignited. Here are some NASA photographs of the blaze.

Several fires, and their plumes. Light plumes came from brine layers. The scene is roughly 10 km wide.

A single oil fire, and its hot halo several hundred meters across. Most fires produced dark soot plumes, but the hottest fires had no plume, and had core temperatures of roughly 1100 Celsius. These arose from burning methane.

An oil lake with an area of about 80 hectares, roughly 1 km in diameter.

Jim Bard, An EOD/Medic's View of Kuwait (1991-1993) (link)
Jim collected a number of photographs arising from his Desert Storm mission and posted it to a personal web site.