Where fires are burning right now (NOAA-21, near-real-time)
What it measures. Detections of where fires and other hot spots are burning, spotted as the satellite passes overhead. The product flags sub-pixel fire activity and separates land, water, and cloud.
How it's made. Produced in near-real-time from the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-21 satellite, using its 375-meter channels and a contextual algorithm that picks out unusually hot pixels.
How & where you'd use it. Used for spotting active wildfires quickly, supporting firefighting and emergency response, and continuing the long satellite record of fire detection.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2024-01-10 → ongoing
- Measured byNOAA-21 (VIIRS)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- Spatial extent-180, -80, 180, 80
- FormatsNetCDF4
- 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 VIIRS/JPSS2 Active Fires 6-Min L2 Swath 375m NRT with short-name VNP14IMG_NRT is a Near Real Time (NRT) active fire detection data product (Schroeder 2014). The product is built on the EOS/MODIS fire product heritage [Kaufman et al., 1998; Giglio et al., 2003], using a multi-spectral contextual algorithm to identify sub-pixel fire activity and other thermal anomalies in the Level 1 (swath) input data. The algorithm uses all five 375 m VIIRS channels to detect fires and separate land, water, and cloud pixels in the image. Additional 750 m channels complement the available VIIRS multispectral data. Those channels are used as input to the baseline active fire detection product, which provides continuity to the EOS/MODIS 1 km Fire and Thermal Anomalies product.<br /> The VIIRS 375 m fire detection data is a 6-min Level 2 swath product based on the input Science Data Record (SDR) Level 1 swath format. The NRT product is currently available through NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE). The data are formatted as NetCDF4 files. For more information read: Schroeder, W., Oliva, P., Giglio, L., & Csiszar, I. A. (2014). The New VIIRS 375m active fire detection data product: algorithm description and initial assessment. Remote Sensing of Environment, 143, 85-96. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2013.12.008 PDF from UMD
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="VJ214IMG_NRT",
version="2",
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 LANCEMODISBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.