Tanami Desert Fires, Australia
"Extremely dry conditions have led to major fires in north-central Australia during the past year. In February, fires along the coast caused extensive damage and loss of life. More recently, dry conditions fed many fires in Australia's least populated area, the Tanami Desert region, which is about the size of Texas and Iowa combined. Vegetation on its sand ridges and plains is limited largely to short grasses and shrubs. The September 7 satellite image shows scars (dark area) from previous fires. The September 23 image shows further scarring from active fires."
yep....noticed that too.
Um, no I didn't notice that at all. One effort shows data from 2004, mainly due to 2004 being such a major year for the Muir Glacier. The rest are pretty recent. 20% are from 2020. 75% from the last 5 years.
Unless you meant that any remote sensing data is from the past, even if taken seconds ago.
Satellite data usually takes a little while to be made public due to processing requirements (e.g. ICESat-2 was launched in 2018, but some higher level products haven't been produced yet.) Then researchers need time to figure out what the data is actually showing.
Also, regarding the images being a few years old, that’s obviously for security reasons. Satellite images made available to the public are never current for obvious reasons.