The development of a Western Hemisphere trend analysis of fires and United States fire potential product from version 6.5 WF_ABBA data

The GOES WildFire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA) at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) detects and monitors fires across a global constellation of geostationary satellites. The GOES WF_ABBA processes data as soon as it arrives, and has also been applied to GOES data back to the start of GOES-8 in 1995. The WF_ABBA is a dynamic multispectral thresholding contextual algorithm that uses the visible (when available), 3.9 μm, and 10.7 μm infrared bands to locate and characterize hot spot pixels. The most recent version, version 6.5, of the WF_ABBA includes Fire Radiative Power and a fire/metadata mask that provides information on processing regions, fire locations, fire confidence, cloud cover, block-out zones, and saturated pixels. These metadata allow for refined trend analyses of fires, accounting for satellite scanning schedules, clouds, and other factors that can skew the raw number of detected fires and their properties.

Fire summary statistics and locations have been generated with the WF_ABBA over the western Hemisphere from 1995 to the present. A trend analysis of fires is being generated for this time period and will be shown along with a discussion of societal impacts due to the fires. Examples of ancillary data that will be used to develop the fire potential product along with the fires detected by the GOES WF_ABBA from 1995 to present over the United States will be shown. The fire potential product aims to improve predictions of fire potential for a 24-48 hour time frame over the United States. The fire trend analysis and, if proven successful, the fire potential product, will be of use to the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) forecasters and others for warning of potential locations of fire development.