Between 28 August and 26 September 2026, night-time infrared sensors on the NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites picked out 7 clusters of heat within this flare field around 27.76N, 52.17E, each burning at 5 MW or more on at least 5 of the last 30 nights. The most persistent was lit on 29 nights, with a peak single-pixel reading of 26.36 MW. Across the month there were 686 hot-night detections. All 7 clusters sit on sites already listed in the 2024 VIIRS Nightfire annual flare summary — the nearest just 0.12 km away, a site credited with 0.523 billion cubic metres that year.
What this is not: heat alone cannot separate a gas flare from a refinery furnace, a kiln or another industrial burner, and the satellite passes only twice a night, so brief flaring is missed. The brightness figure is not a volume — the sensor saturates on big flares. The 2024 record proves the site is a known flare, not that it burned this week. Cold venting and unlit methane are invisible here.
What would change our mind: a cloudy stretch hiding nights, a site registry showing a non-flare furnace, or methane data from Sentinel-5P or EMIT telling a different story.
Written by AI, then checked by a separate reviewer before publication. Every claim points at the evidence below.