Daily global active fire detections at 1km (Copernicus)
What it measures. Flags pixels where the satellite detected the heat of an active fire, with day-by-day detail and a measure of each fire's intensity, at 1-kilometre resolution.
How it's made. Derived from MODIS thermal observations on NASA's Aqua satellite and bundled into 8-day files holding daily fire readings.
How & where you'd use it. Supports wildfire detection and monitoring, emergency response, and research into fire patterns and their effect on air quality and climate.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2002-07-04 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
What you can do with it
- Map vegetation, forests and biomass
- Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
- Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description
The MODIS Aqua MYD14A1 Version 6.1 product provides information on thermal anomalies and active fires at 1 km spatial resolution as a Level-3 dataset. The product is generated as an 8-day composite, where each file contains fire observations from eight consecutive days of MODIS Aqua data. The dataset includes several science data layers such as a fire mask identifying active fire pixels, pixel quality indicators, maximum Fire Radiative Power (MaxFRP), and the position of the fire pixel within the satellite scan. Each layer contains daily per-pixel information for each of the eight days within the compositing period.
Get the data
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client
cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
collections=["modis-aqua-myd14a1"], # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60), # your area (W,S,E,N)
datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items()) # then read assets with rioxarray / xarrayBrowsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC