Western Hemisphere Diurnal Fire Activity 1995-2012: Description and Initial Fire Trend Analysis of the GOES-East Version 6.5 WF_ABBA Data Archive

The University of Wisconsin-Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies Biomass Burning Team has processed the complete 18 year archive of GOES-East data over the Western Hemisphere from 1995-2012 with an updated version of the WildFire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA-version 6.5). The fire archive also includes GOES-West, GOES-South America, Meteosat, and MTSAT data from 2009 through the present. The WF_ABBA dataset has been utilized by a diverse group of researchers and applied scientists in peer-reviewed literature in recent years. Version 6.5 of the WF_ABBA was designed to better meet the needs of this broad user community by adding requested features to the instantaneous fire size and temperature provided previously. Fire radiative power and a fire/metadata mask that provides information on processing regions, fire locations, fire confidence, cloud cover, and processing block-out zones were added to the product. The new metadata allow for refined trend analyses of fires, accounting for satellite scanning schedules, clouds, and other factors that skew the raw number of detected fires and their properties. A description of the techniques used to create the 0.25 degree binned, satellite and coverage corrected WF_ABBA analysis data set is included along with a discussion of key considerations such as satellite scanning schedules, cloud coverage, and block out zones. The version 6.5 WF_ABBA dataset is described and an initial investigation presented. This initial fire analysis includes an assessment of the diurnal cycle and an inter/intra-annual trend analysis of fire statistics over North, Central, and South America with special attention to the Arc of Deforestation for 1995-2012. The updated dataset will be useful to a diverse user community, a user community that needs to understand the benefits and limitations of the long-term WF_ABBA dataset.