As wildfires continue to burn in California, NASA has released a visualization that illustrates one of the ways in which the fires are affecting the atmosphere. NASA’s Earth Observatory, the arm of the space agency that shares with the public images of the Earth and its climate, created the map (embedded above, and below with captions) which shows aerosols in the atmosphere. Aerosols are the solid particles and liquid droplets in the air. “If you have ever watched smoke billowing from a wildfire, ash erupting from a volcano, or dust blowing in the wind, you have seen aerosols,” says a blog post accompanying the image.