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Full catalog/VJ114A1
VJ114A1·v002·dataset

Where fires are burning, daily (VIIRS, NOAA-20)

VIIRS/JPSS1 Thermal Anomalies and Fire Daily L3 Global 1km SIN Grid V002
biosphere NASA LPCLOUD Level 3 active HDF-EOS5
In plain English

What it measures. Daily global maps, at about 1-kilometer detail, marking where active fires and other hot spots were detected, along with each fire's confidence, intensity (radiative power), and quality information.

How it's made. Produced from the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite by detecting heat in its 750-meter bands and compiling the day's fire pixels into a gridded composite, modeled on the older MODIS fire products.

How & where you'd use it. Used to monitor wildfires and agricultural burning, support firefighting and emergency response, and study fire patterns, emissions, and trends over time.

What's measured

BIOSPHERE › ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS › FIRE ECOLOGY › FIRE OCCURRENCELAND SURFACE › SURFACE THERMAL PROPERTIES › LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURELAND SURFACE › SURFACE THERMAL PROPERTIES › LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE › THERMAL ANOMALIES

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-01-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byNOAA-20 (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS5
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Map vegetation, forests and biomass
  • Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
  • Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description

The daily NOAA-20 Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Thermal Anomalies and Fire (VJ114A1) Version 2 data product provides daily information about active fires and other thermal anomalies. The VJ114A1 data product is a global, 1 kilometer (km) gridded composite of fire pixels detected from VIIRS 750 meter (m) bands over a daily (24-hour) period. The VJ114 data products are designed after the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Thermal Anomalies/Fire product suite. The VJ114A1 product provides a total of four Science Dataset (SDS) variables for the confidence of fire, maximum fire radiative power (FRP), quality assessment (QA), and position of fire within scan. Each data product file is provided in HDF-EOS5 format. A low resolution browse is also provided showing the fire mask variable with a color map applied in JPEG format. Known Issues * For complete information about known issues please refer to the [MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website](https://landweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/knownissue?sensor=VIIRS) and in Section 5.0 “Frequently Asked Questions” of the User Guide.

Get the data

vj114a1_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ114A1",
    version="002",
    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 LPCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.