GOES-8 ABBA wildfire detection and monitoring in North and Central America

Over the past 10 years the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin has used the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) to monitor fires and smoke in the Western Hemisphere. CIMSS initially developed the GOES Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (ABBA) to automatically identify and characterize fires observed in multispectral GOES imagery in South America in an effort to determine trends in biomass burning activities in the tropics. The GOES-8 ABBA is being modified by CIMSS and the NOAA/NESDIS Office of Research and Applications (ORA) for wildfire detection and monitoring in North and Central America. To date most real-time satellite wildfire monitoring activities have utilized NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) imagery. Recent studies in North and Central America have demonstrated the utility of using high temporal GOES-8 ABBA fire products for early warning fire detection and diurnal monitoring. Although the GOES-8 instrument has relatively coarse spatial resolution (4 km), sub-pixel fires on the order of 1 acre in size have been identified with this instrument. Furthermore, GOES-8 provides high temporal resolution with 15-minute coverage of the continental U.S. and portions of Canada and half-hourly coverage elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. In special super rapid scan operational (SRSO) mode, 1-minute GOES imagery can provide insight on changes in sub-pixel fire size/intensity from one minute to the next.

In this paper we will first discuss the characteristics of the GOES (I-M) series that impact wildfire detection and monitoring. We will also address the capabilities of automated wildfire detection using the GOES-8 ABBA. The paper will include an overview of differences between the South American GOES-8 ABBA and the experimental wildfire ABBA. The South American ABBA was designed to identify anthropogenic fires associated with agricultural activities under clear-sky conditions for climate change analyses. Since many of the wildfires in North America are associated with lightning activity, the ABBA is being redesigned to identify wildfires in real-time and minimize false alarms in post-frontal and partly cloudy conditions. Applications of the experimental wildfire ABBA in Central and North America will be presented for case studies in Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The paper will focus on results from a multi-year collaboration with Environment Canada (Quebec Region) to demonstrate and evaluate the capabilities of the GOES-8 ABBA for early warning fire detection and monitoring at northerly latitudes by comparing GOES-8 wildfire ABBA results with ground truth observations.