Synthetic GOES-R Imagery of Agricultural and Wild Fires

Synthetic imagery for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) Advance Baseline Imager (ABI) of three numerically-simulated events have been produced and delivered to the GOES-R Algorithm Working Group (AWG). This data will serve as proxy data for use in fire detection algorithm testing and development. Included in this dataset are synthetic images at 3.9, 10.35, and 11.2 µm. The three fire events are an idealized event over eastern Kansas that occurred on 8 May 2003, a Central American case from 4 April 2004, and the October 2007 fires over southern California.

Our efforts have concentrated on producing synthetic imagery with fire hotspots. That is, fire characteristics have been added into an observational operator: Either idealized fire characteristics or satellite retrieved fire characteristics. As a result, ABI synthetic imagery, with a 400 m footprint, has been generated at 3.9, 10.35, and 11.2 µm. One consequence of the 400 m footprint size is the ability to build sub-pixel fire signatures for GOES-R ABI. This was done by building ABI pixels of appropriate size using a point spread function. This work is part of the GOES-R risk reduction activities for the GOES-R satellite. This satellite is planned to be launched in 2015.

Methodologies of the numerical simulations and conversion of simulated output into synthetic GOES-R ABI imagery, containing fire hotspots, will be discussed.