Making Sense of GOES-16/-17 Fire Detection

Fire detection has been a feature of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series for about 20 years, but with better resolution in time and space the new Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellites has made the product more useful than ever. Recent major wildfires have brought a great deal of attention to early fire detection and monitoring, and the National Weather Service (NWS) offices are increasingly making use of GOES images to monitor fires in areas of concern, and stories about NWS offices finding structure fires like apartment buildings and barns appear with increasing frequency. This presentation will cover qualitative and quantitative fire monitoring using GOES-16/-17 data: the use of the raw imagery and how it may be enhanced for display for the public, and the use of fire detection products and what information they provide about ongoing fire activity and how that may be used to inform the public about ongoing events. These new satellites provide fire data every five minutes over the lower 48 states, and in many cases minute by minute monitoring. Examples will be drawn from recent fire events and cover the gamut from the largest fires, like massive Western forest fires, to the smallest, like controlled burns and structure fires that draw public attention due to their visibility and impact on local air quality.