Introducing a New Satellite Data Product for Mapping Fire Lines and Studying the Impacts of Fire Weather on Fire Combustion Efficiency at Night

In response to climate change, a drier and hotter surface environment has resulted in more frequent wildfires, especially at night. Here we present a satellite data product supported by NASA for mapping fire lines and fire combustion efficiency at night. This data product is generated by applying the FIre Light Detection Algorithm - second generation (FILDA-2) to VIIRS instruments aboard Suomi-NPP, JPSS-1, and JPSS-2. The FILDA-2 uses multi-spectral radiances measured by VIIRS and combined the measurements of fire light together with other infrared bands to improve the detection of smaller and cooler fires, and derive the visible energy fraction in addition to the fire radiative power (FRP) for each active fire pixel. Moreover, FILDA-2 mitigates angular dependence in FRP estimates and significantly reduces the “bow-tie” (double-counting) effect in fire detection compared with the existing fire product. FILDA-2 is currently implemented by NASA to create a new VIIRS data product (VNP47) for fire monitoring, chemical-speciated fire emission estimates, and fire line characterization.

In this presentation, I will show the advantage of MCE data product as compared to FRP data product for mapping the progression of fire lines at nights. I will also illustrate how MCE data reflects the impact of weather (such as wind speed and relative humidity) on fire combustion processes, and elaborate the potential of this data product for fine-scale fire line modeling and prediction.