The D-FIRE sub-project provides global emissions from biomass burning to the other MACC services and to the general public. The emissions are calculated in real time and retrospectively from satellite-based observations of open fires (for example wildfires and human-ignited grassland and forest fires).

Latest Observed Fire Distribution

!!!NEW!!! Global combustion rate for the last ten days in KML/KMZ format, to be viewed in Google Earth !!!NEW!!!
You may want to overlay the KML with the latest MODIS hot spot locations provided by the University of Maryland.

Global emission rates of various species can be downloaded in NetCDF format from the MACC Server at FZ Juelich.

Retrospective emissions are also available on the ECCAD server of GEIA.

The map represents the thermal radiation measured from space-borne sensors and detected as coming from actively burning vegetation and other open fires. It is expressed as the daily average of the fire radiative power (FRP) observations made in 125 km grid cells and expressed in the units of [mW/m²]. The rate of release of thermal radiation by a fire is believed to be related to the rate at which fuel is being consumed and smoke produced. Therefore, these daily averaged FRP areal intensity data are used in the global estimation of open vegetation fire trace gas and particulate emissions, which are passed onto the other MACC services for incorporation as model source terms. The data are derived from FRP observations by the SEVIRI and MODIS instruments, which are provided by the EUMETSAT LSA SAF and NASA, respectively. Earlier maps are also available for the past 365 days.

Highlight: Western Russian Wildfires in 2010

The animation above shows the fire activity and smoke plumes in western Russia during the heat wave of July and August 2010; the MACC GFAS assimilation of Fire Radiative Power observations are superimposed over the smoke plumes in a MACC global aerosol model simulation that combines the smoke emissions calculated in GFAS with aerosol optical depth observations from space. Both types of observations are performed by the satellite-based MODIS instruments and NASA has provided the observation data. Details of the plotted dataset can be found in Kaiser et al. (Biogeosciences 2012), where it is described as "NRT analysis".

Latest Smoke Distribution Forecasts

• Organic matter, black carbon and sulfate aerosols are emitted from fires and other, mostly anthropogenic, sources. They are called "anthropogenic aerosols" in MACC and the latest forecast of their aerosol optical depth (AOD), including emissions derived from the latest observed fire distribution and assimilation of space-borne AOD observations, is available HERE.
• Forecasts of a carbon monoxide-like tracer that are solely due to the emissions by the latest observed fires are available HERE. We recommend to use the concentration at 925hPa because the surface fields may suffer from spuriously large values at the locations of the fires, which still originate from neglecting the smoke plume rise.

Fire Products

• Our pre-operational products are available from the Fire Emission Service web page.
• The GFED data are available here.
• Custom products created following individual user requests are available on a dedicated web page.
• All fire products in the MARS archive at ECMWF are listed on this web page.
• If you cannot find what you are looking for, please contact us.
  

The Team

• Angelika Heil, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
• Guido van der Werf, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Johannes Kaiser, ECMWF (lead)
• Martin Schultz, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
• Martin Wooster, King's College London, UK
• Rob Detmers, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Ronan Paugam, King's College London, UK
• Pedro Viterbo, Instituto de Meteorologia, Portugal

Recent Publications and Presentations

• Kaiser, J. W., Heil, A., Andreae, M. O., Benedetti, A., Chubarova, N., Jones, L., Morcrette, J.-J., Razinger, M., Schultz, M. G., Suttie, M., and van der Werf, G. R. (2012). Biomass burning emissions estimated with a global fire assimilation system based on observed fire radiative power. BG, 9:527-554. [PDF]
• Xu et al. (2010) New GOES imager algorithms for cloud and active fire detection and fire radiative power assessment across North, South and Central America. RSE Vol. 114 [PDF]
• Heil et al. (2010) Assessment of the Real-Time Fire Emissions (GFASv0) by MACC, ECMWF Tech. Memo No. 628 [PDF]

More publications and presentations are available on our dedicated Publications and Presentations web page.

External Links

• GMAI, CPTEC/INPE, Brazil
• FLAMBE, NRL, USA
• EFFIS, JRC, EU
• GFMC, MPI Chemistry, Germany
• also see ESF Exploratory Workshop on Fires, September 2009, Farnham Castle

Contact

Johannes Kaiser: j.kaiser@ecmwf.int