Wildfires: Watching them with GOES

The severity and frequency of wildfires has been increasing over the last few decades, and we’ve seen multiple cases where towns and cities have burned. The need to understand and report on those events will only continue to grow. Fortunately, our ability to continuously observe both the fires and the conditions that drive them has improved, particularly since the GOES-R series of satellites was launched. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on GOES-R has proven to be a remarkably capable fire detection instrument despite its somewhat coarse 2 km resolution. The instrument also lets us observe the meteorological conditions present at the time of the fire as well as some of the signs that show we should be particularly wary of dangerous fire conditions. But ABI doesn’t only observe the giant fires, it sees small ones too. It detects a large fraction of prescribed burns (many of which might seem to be too small to see), and it can even detect structure fires, down to the residential level. Knowing the approximate scope of a small fire and the ambient conditions is important to understanding whether the fire threatens lives and property. This presentation will use recent examples to look at what ABI can tell us about fire events both big and small before, during, and after they occur. It will cover what makes a fire detectable and demonstrate available online tools for getting at the ABI imagery and fire products so that broadcasters are able to analyze and present the information.