Wildfire Growth Database Fusing Polar-Orbiting and Geostationary Satellite Observations and Agency Fire Records

Better understanding of wildfire progression and fire behavior is of significant concern for research and fire management communities. Advances in these topics require a long-term, consistent, high-resolution dataset. To date, datasets with high spatiotemporal resolution cover limited timeframes, focus on large fires, and/or use a single observation source. We have developed a methodology named Firelytics for computing daily-to-hourly wildfire growth that includes all fire sizes and fuses polar-orbiting and geostationary satellite observations and multi-agency fire records. First, we use sub-daily active thermal anomaly retrievals from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the polar-orbiting satellites SNPP and NOAA-20 to map detailed fire perimeter and compute the size and growth areas of active fires. We then incorporate continuous active fire observations from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) to estimate hourly fire growths. These data are then fused with multiple agency records to provide the names, causes, and context for the fires. The resulting data provide information on hourly fire growth variability and shows strong correlation with observed relative humidity and wind speed. The data are also highly correlated with aircraft infrared measurements. The high spatiotemporal resolution and consistency of fire Firelytics data presents a significant upgrade over current wildfire databases for multiple application areas, including fire weather analysis, fire behavior modeling, wildfire potential predictions, smoke modeling, and near-real-time fire monitoring. We will present the latest updates on Firelytics data and their usage, and a new data dashboard application.