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Interviewer: Joining us now from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD is

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Dr. Doug Morton who's going to talk to us about wild fires. Lets talk about

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this years wild fire season, what have you seen so far?

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Doug: The 2013 fire season has been a pretty active year across the western U.S. We got an 

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early start in Southern California with fires in May. And that's just continued straight on 

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through with damaging wild fires across parts of Arizona and 

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Colorado some of the most damaging in history in terms of the loss of property.

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This fire season actually represents a some what average fire year when you look at the 

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total amount of burned area and that's something we can do using NASA satellites to look at how 

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this year compares to previous years over the last 40 years.

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Interviewer: So NASA has been monitoring fires from space for about 3 decades, what are some of the

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trends you are seeing. Doug: Across the United States we've seen a large increase

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in the total amount of burning over the last 30 years. When we look globally 

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we see a singular trend with an increasing number of fires across areas

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like Southern Africa, the Amazon Brazilian Deforestation

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Arc as well as areas in Siberia. So these large wild fires 

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are something we can see with the variety of satellites we have here at NASA

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from space. Interviewer: What do your projections show for the future ?

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Doug: Hot and dry conditions are really needed to have a large wild fire 

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and as we look out using the latest generation of climate models we see areas of the United

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States that are already prone to fires getting hotter and dryer, here

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showing shades of red. As well as the fact that we see areas that today 

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aren't at risk of large wild fires becoming a greater risk of those fires by the end

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of this century, areas like the upper Midwest or the Great Plains.

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Interviewer: So how are NASA satellites flying,

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How are NASA satellites flying some 400 miles above the earth

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used to detect and monitor wild fires? Doug: At NASA we have

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14 different satellites that are observing the earth at all times. Those satellites give

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us an opportunity to study fires globally. Satellites like NASA's LANDSAT

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series allow us to look at a detailed opportunity of mapping 

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out individual fires and their burn scars, other satellites are used to actively 

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detect those fires and distribute that information in near real time. We even use 

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other satellite sensors to study the smoke that gets released by those fires and we can combine

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all that information into a global model that allows us to look at where fires are burning 

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and how the aerosols, smoke and particulate matter that gets released from those fires

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mixes into our atmosphere and helps us understand the Earth as a system.

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Interviewer: Learn

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and see more? Doug: This information and much more 

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is available at nasa./gov/fires with additional information about 

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the individual satellites and the scientists that use the data form those satellites to better

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understand how fires are changing our natural ecosystems and our human societies.

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