Aursee · method

How Aursee works

Aursee is a map of every fire burning on Earth that a satellite has seen in the last 24 hours, rebuilt every hour, with a history of where fire has been detected since 2012.

In one paragraph

Three VIIRS instruments in polar orbit record hot pixels 375 m across. Every hour we read NASA FIRMS for the last full 24 hours, join neighbouring pixels into fires, name each one after the nearest town, and attach what is known about the place: the weather, lightning where there is coverage, land cover, road density, and how often that ground has burned before. Each fire keeps its first-seen time, its detections and its summed radiative power.

Three kinds of statement

Detected is what an instrument recorded. Derived is computed from detections by a rule stated on these pages. Inferred is an interpretation and is labelled as one. Every figure on the site comes with its instrument and resolution.

Reference

• What a satellite fire detection isHow VIIRS finds active fires from orbit, what a 375 m detection means, and when a fire is not seen.
• Fires in the dark: how satellites find them at nightWhy a fire is easier to see from orbit at night, how VIIRS picks a flame of a few dozen square metres out of a 375 m pixel, and what “burning in darkness” means on the map.
• Fire radiative power (MW)What fire radiative power measures, how Aursee adds it up, and how to compare two fires.
• How detections become firesThe rule Aursee uses to turn individual satellite pixels into fires you can open, name and follow.
• The burn archive, 2012 to todayHow Aursee remembers where fire has been detected since 2012, and what the history figures on each page mean.
• Lightning near a fireHow Aursee checks for lightning before a fire was first seen, and where that check is possible.
• Land cover and roads under a fireWhat kind of ground a fire is burning on, and how many roads are around it: sources and resolution.
• Weather at a fireWhere the wind, humidity and temperature on a fire page come from, and at what time and resolution.
• Data sources and licencesEvery dataset Aursee uses, who publishes it, and the licence it is used under.

Where to go next

• Fires burning nowToday's fires by country, ranked by radiative power.
• Country fire histories200 countries, every year since 2012.
• Notable firesThe largest fires Aursee has recorded, kept as a permanent record.
• Map layersWhat each layer on the map shows.
• StatisticsToday's numbers for the whole planet.