Maps and traits of individual wildfires worldwide (2003-2016)
What it measures. A worldwide catalog of individual wildfires from 2003 to 2016, recording each fire's ignition timing and location, size, duration, how fast and far it grew each day, the length of its fire line, and its direction of spread.
How it's made. Built by an algorithm that tracks day-to-day burning in NASA's MODIS burned-area product (from the Terra and Aqua satellites) at 500 m resolution and stitches the daily burns into discrete fires.
How & where you'd use it. Lets researchers, fire managers and reporters study how fires start, grow and move; the dataset identified 13.3 million individual fires over the period.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2003-01-01 → 2016-12-31
- Measured byCOMPUTERS (Computer) · Terra (MODIS) · Aqua (MODIS)
- Processing levelLevel 4
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- Formatsmultiple
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The Global Fire Atlas is a global dataset that tracks the day-to-day dynamics of individual fires to determine the timing and location of ignitions, fire size, duration, daily expansion, fire line length, speed, and direction of spread. These individual fire characteristics were derived based on the Global Fire Atlas algorithm and estimated day of burn information at 500-m resolution from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Collection 6 MCD64A1 burned area product. The algorithm identified 13.3 million individual fires (>=21 ha or 0.21 km2; the size of one MODIS pixel) over the 2003-2016 study period.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="CMS_Global_Fire_Atlas_1642",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA
- Collection Bundle URL GET DATA
- ORNL DAAC Data Set Documentation VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- A pdf of the guide document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION