Interviewer: Joining us now from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD is
Dr. Doug Morton who's going to talk to us about wild fires. Lets talk about
this years wild fire season, what have you seen so far?
Doug: The 2013 fire season has been a pretty active year across the western U.S. We got an
early start in Southern California with fires in May. And that's just continued straight on
through with damaging wild fires across parts of Arizona and
Colorado some of the most damaging in history in terms of the loss of property.
This fire season actually represents a some what average fire year when you look at the
total amount of burned area and that's something we can do using NASA satellites to look at how
this year compares to previous years over the last 40 years.
Interviewer: So NASA has been monitoring fires from space for about 3 decades, what are some of the
trends you are seeing. Doug: Across the United States we've seen a large increase
in the total amount of burning over the last 30 years. When we look globally
we see a singular trend with an increasing number of fires across areas
like Southern Africa, the Amazon Brazilian Deforestation
Arc as well as areas in Siberia. So these large wild fires
are something we can see with the variety of satellites we have here at NASA
from space. Interviewer: What do your projections show for the future ?
Doug: Hot and dry conditions are really needed to have a large wild fire
and as we look out using the latest generation of climate models we see areas of the United
States that are already prone to fires getting hotter and dryer, here
showing shades of red. As well as the fact that we see areas that today
aren't at risk of large wild fires becoming a greater risk of those fires by the end
of this century, areas like the upper Midwest or the Great Plains.
Interviewer: So how are NASA satellites flying,
How are NASA satellites flying some 400 miles above the earth
used to detect and monitor wild fires? Doug: At NASA we have
14 different satellites that are observing the earth at all times. Those satellites give
us an opportunity to study fires globally. Satellites like NASA's LANDSAT
series allow us to look at a detailed opportunity of mapping
out individual fires and their burn scars, other satellites are used to actively
detect those fires and distribute that information in near real time. We even use
other satellite sensors to study the smoke that gets released by those fires and we can combine
all that information into a global model that allows us to look at where fires are burning
and how the aerosols, smoke and particulate matter that gets released from those fires
mixes into our atmosphere and helps us understand the Earth as a system.
Interviewer: Learn
and see more? Doug: This information and much more
is available at nasa./gov/fires with additional information about
the individual satellites and the scientists that use the data form those satellites to better
understand how fires are changing our natural ecosystems and our human societies.