NASA Logo, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Goddard Space Flight Center

ALT

Fire Energetics and Emissions Research

FEER Updates

RSS

20.Feb.2019 - VIIRS active fire data available as VNPFIRE product.

12.Feb.2019 - FEERv1.0 Emissions processing stream fixed.

08.Feb.2019 - MODFIRE processing stream fixed.

31.Jul.2018 - Suomi-NPP VIIRS fire data added to Africa Explorer.

MODFIRE/VNPFIRE Data

Product description

The MODIS instrument (or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) provides an active fire product containing instantaneous fire radiative power (FRP) measurements at the native 1-km resolution ("Level 2") from both Terra and Aqua, known as the MOD14 and MYD14 products, respectfully. More information is available on the MODIS Active Fire website.

The VIIRS instrument also provides an active fire product at two resolutions: the "I" band (375m resolution) and the "M" band (750m resolution). These are the VNP14 and VNP14IMG products, respectively. More information is available on the VIIRS Active Fire webpage.

Occasionally there are erroneous retreivals where all the pixels in one whole section of a MODIS or VIIRS scene are tagged as fire. These false detections are removed from the data set. The following files are the files that were excluded. If only a part of a file is excluded, the line indices that are excluded are listed after the file. The file format is "PRODUCT.DATE.TIME.COLLECTION" which matches the beginnings of the Level 2 file names.

Data access

data in native format

The raw Level 2 MOD14/MYD14 data sets (i.e. processed but not yet aggregated) are available in HDF format through the options listed below. The raw Level 2 VNP14/VNP14IMG data sets are available in NetCDF format, also listed below. There are Level 3 tiled composite MODIS and VIIRS active fire data products at daily (e.g. "MOD14A1") and at 8-day (e.g. "MOD14A2") resolutions that are also readily available through the same mediums.

data in ASCII format

For ease of use, the MODFIRE and VNPFIRE products were created by converting the 5-minute MOD14/MYD14 data files in HDF format, and 6-minutes VNP14/VNP14IMG in NetCDF format, to a convenient set of daily comma-separated ASCII files, which are updated bi-hourly. Individual daily MODFIRE data files may be downloaded in bulk using the getMODFIREdata shell script, and VNPFIRE data files may likewise be downloaded using getVNPFIREdata. (Either Wget or cURL must be installed.)

This data set has also been compressed into yearly ZIP files, which are available at the following links, and are updated on the second day of every month:

MODFIRE

VNPFIRE

Data file description

The following table gives descriptions for the data stored in these MODFIRE/VNPFIRE files. Further detailed descriptions are provided in the subsequent list of references. Rows highlighted in green indicate parameters unique to MODFIRE, and rows highlighted in magenta indicate parameters unique to VNPFIRE.

Hide Table
Parameter Units Data Type Description
Date YYYY-MM-DD string Date of the fire measurement.
Time HH:MM string UTC time of the fire measurement.
Filename PPPPP.AYYYYDDD. HHMM.VVV.YYYYDDDHHMMSS.XXX string Filename of the raw HDF file in which the fire measurement was recorded, where PPPPP is the product (MOD14, MYD14, VNP14 or VNP14IMG), YYYYDDD is the acquisition date, HHMM is the acquisition time, VVV is the product collection/version, YYYYDDDHHMMSS is the processing date, and XXX is the extension ("hdf" for MODIS, and "nc" for VIIRS).
FP_line - uint16 Granule line of fire pixel.
FP_sample - uint16 Granule sample of fire pixel.
FP_latitude degrees float32 Latitude at center of fire pixel.
FP_longitude degrees float32 Longitude at center of fire pixel.
FP_R2 - float32 Near-IR (band 2) reflectance of fire pixel (daytime only).
FP_R7 - float32 Near-IR (band 7) reflectance of fire pixel (daytime only).
FP_T21 Kelvin float32 Channel 21/22 brightness temperature of fire pixel.
FP_T31 Kelvin float32 Channel 31 brightness temperature of fire pixel.
FP_T13 Kelvin float32 Channel M13 brightness temperature of fire pixel.
FP_T15 Kelvin float32 Channel M15 brightness temperature of fire pixel.
FP_T4 Kelvin float32 Channel I4 brightness temperature of fire pixel.
FP_T5 Kelvin float32 Channel I5 brightness temperature of fire pixel.
FP_MeanT21 Kelvin float32 Background channel 21/22 brightness temperature.
FP_MeanT31 Kelvin float32 Background channel 31 brightness temperature.
FP_MeanT13 Kelvin float32 Background channel M13 brightness temperature.
FP_MeanT15 Kelvin float32 Background channel M15 brightness temperature.
FP_MeanT4 Kelvin float32 Background channel I4 brightness temperature.
FP_MeanT5 Kelvin float32 Background channel I5 brightness temperature.
FP_MeanDT Kelvin float32 Mean background brightness temperature difference.
FP_MAD_T21 Kelvin float32 Background channel 21/22 brightness temperature mean absolute deviation.
FP_MAD_T31 Kelvin float32 Background channel 31 brightness temperature mean absolute deviation.
FP_MAD_T13 Kelvin float32 Background channel M13 brightness temperature mean absolute deviation.
FP_MAD_T15 Kelvin float32 Background channel M15 brightness temperature mean absolute deviation.
FP_MAD_T4 Kelvin float32 Background channel I4 brightness temperature mean absolute deviation.
FP_MAD_T5 Kelvin float32 Background channel I5 brightness temperature mean absolute deviation.
FP_MAD_DT Kelvin float32 Background brightness temperature difference mean absolute deviation.
FP_power megawatts float32 Fire radiative power.
FP_Rad13 W.m-2.sr-1.μm-1 float32 Channel M13 radiance of fire pixel.
FP_MeanRad13 W.m-2.sr-1.μm-1 float32 Channel M13 mean background radiance.
FP_AdjCloud - uint16 Number of adjacent cloud pixels.
FP_AdjWater - uint16 Number of adjacent water pixels.
FP_WinSize - uint16 Background window size.
FP_NumValid - uint16 Number of valid background pixels.
FP_confidence percent uint8 Detection confidence estimate.
FP_land - uint8 Land flag (0:water pixel, 1:land pixel).
FP_MeanR2 - float32 Background channel 2 reflectance.
FP_MAD_R2 - float32 Background channel 2 reflectance mean absolute deviation.
FP_MeanR7 - float32 Background channel 7 reflectance.
FP_MAD_R7 - float32 Background channel 7 reflectance mean absolute deviation.
FP_day degrees uint8 Day flag (0:night, 1:day).
FP_SolZenAng degrees float32 Solar zenith angle.
FP_SolAzAng degrees float32 Solar azimuth angle.
FP_ViewZenAng degrees float32 View zenith angle.
FP_ViewAzAng degrees float32 View azimuth angle.
FP_RelAzAng degrees float32 Relative azimuth angle.
FP_CMG_row - int16 Climate Modeling Grid row.
FP_CMG_col - int16 Climate Modeling Grid column.

References

Giglio, L. 2015. MODIS Collection 6 Active Fire Product User's Guide: Revision A. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland. [Link]

Giglio, L. 2013. MODIS Collection 5 Active Fire Product User's Guide: Version 2.5. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland. [Link]

Giglio, L., J. Descloitres, C. O. Justice and Y. Kaufman. 2003. An enhanced contextual fire detection algorithm for MODIS. Remote Sensing of Environment, 87, 273-282. doi:10.1016/S0034-4257(03)00184-6.

Justice, C. O., L. Giglio, S. Korontzi, J. Owens, J. Morisette, D. Roy, J. Descloitres, S. Alleaume, F. Petitcolin and Y. J. Kaufman. 2002. The MODIS fire products. Remote Sensing of Environment, 83, 244-262. doi:10.1016/S0034-4257(02)00076-7.

Kaufman, Y. J., C. O. Justice, L. P. Flynn, J. D. Kendall, E. M. Prins, L. Giglio, D. E. Ward, W. P. Menzel and A. W. Setzer. 1998. Potential global fire monitoring from EOS-MODIS. Journal of Geophysical Research, 103 (32), 215-238. doi:10.1029/98JD01644.