The New Operational VIIRS Active Fire Product in NOAA's NDE System

The active fire product from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) continues the heritage of the Fire and Thermal Anomalies product from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. NOAA is in the process of implementing by late 2015 a new VIIRS active fire product in the Suomi NPP Data Exploitation (NDE) system for operational production. This product meets the JPSS program requirements by delivering a spatially explicit fire mask and fire radiative power (FRP) in addition to the list of fire pixels. It is a tailored version of the NASA VIIRS Active Fire science product to maximize consistency between the algorithms and data products generated within NOAA's real-time operational framework and NASA's science and application activities. As part of the implementation and integration efforts the Active Fire Science Team and the NESDIS STAR Algorithm Integration Team worked on generating the necessary interfaces and production system consistent with the NOAA NDE specifications. The team also worked with key end users to familiarize with the new product and obtain feedback on product quality. A long-term monitoring system has also been implemented at STAR to identify possible data anomalies and facilitate reactive maintenance of the product as needed. The system currently monitors the original baseline active fire product generated by the Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS), which continues serving as an auxiliary input to several downstream operational products within IDPS, but is being expanded to include the new NDE product. The science team continues work on detailed product validation and on preparation for the JPSS 1 satellite. The validation plan developed for JPSS 1 is based on experience with MODIS and Suomi NPP data and also includes new correlative datasets available, as well as plans for the validation of the new variables delivered by the NDE product.