Night-time infrared passes from the NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites picked up 18 separate heat clusters inside the Ramshir flare field in Khuzestan, Iran, each hot enough (5 MW or more) to register on at least 5 of the last 30 nights. The most persistent burned on 29 nights, with a peak single-pixel radiative power of 42.47 MW. A later pass on 27 September found heat again at the flagged cluster (25.15 MW), so this is not a one-night artefact. All 18 clusters match sites in the VNF annual flare inventory, the largest credited with 0.266 billion cubic metres in 2024 — evidence these are established flare stacks, not something new.
What this is not: a satellite cannot tell a gas flare from a refinery furnace or a kiln, and heat alone says nothing about who operates the site or how much gas is burned. Cloudy nights hide flares, so counts are a floor, not a ceiling. Cold venting and unlit methane leaks are invisible here entirely.
We would revise if the clusters resolve to non-flare industrial heat, if imagery shows a fire or facility event rather than steady stacks, or if the VNF match proves to be a nearby but different site.
Written by AI, then checked by a separate reviewer before publication. Every claim points at the evidence below.