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Active Fires As Observed by VIIRS, January-September 2021
This animated visualization uses a moving three-day average of summed VIIRS measurments of fire radiative power (FRP), to present a view of fire intensities around the globe.
This visualization shows active fires as observed by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS, between January 1 and September 24 2021. The VIIRS instrument flies on the Joint Polar Satellite System’s Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 polar-orbiting satellites. Instruments on polar orbiting satellites typically observe a wildfire at a given location a few times a day as they orbit the Earth from pole to pole. VIIRS detects hot spots at a resolution of 375 meters per pixel, which means it can detect smaller, lower temperature fires than other fire-observing satellites. Its observations are about three times more detailed than those from the MODIS instrument, for example. VIIRS also provides nighttime fire detection capabilities through its Day-Night Band, which can measure low-intensity visible light emitted by small and fledgling fires. This visualization uses data from the Suomi-NPP VIIRS instrument, and will be updated periodically until the end of 2021.
Animated Wildfire Intensity, North America
Date Layer Only
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Visualizer
- Trent L. Schindler (USRA)
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Scientist
- Doug C. Morton (NASA/GSFC)
Release date
This page was originally published on Friday, October 1, 2021.
This page was last updated on Friday, August 2, 2024 at 4:23 PM EDT.
Datasets used
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BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]
ID: 508Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
This dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See all pages that use this dataset -
Fire Pixels [Suomi NPP: VIIRS]
ID: 1053
Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.