A recent observation of Syria’s night time lights reveals that 83% of the country’s lights have gone out since the start of the military conflict in 2011.‪#‎WithSyria‬, a movement of some 130 organizations, has released a satellite image of Syria’s night time lights, dated February 2015. When placed side-by-side with a similar picture from March, 2011, it shows that the country is approximately 83 percent dimmer than at the start of the military conflict. A Chinese researcher, Xi Li, has watched Syria’s warfare unfolding through night time satellite imagery and has measured the levels of night time light across the country since the start of the conflict in March 2011. He now says that most of the country’s night time lights have gone out, including 97 percent of the lights in Aleppo, 35 percent in Damascus and 96 percent in Raqqa, the new de facto capital of the Islamic State militants.
The researcher says the displacement of people has been the main factor behind the darkening: 3.8 million people have fled the country. He also blamed power shortages and damage to Syria’s infrastructure. As single images can be affected by cloud cover or other factors, Li came up with a monthly average image of night time light so it could be compared over the course of Syria’s conflict. The researcher says he is now looking at the current conflict in Iraq through a similar analysis of night time lights.