Global Fire Distributions Determined from NOAA-AVHRR Data

Vegetation fires occur world-wide, all year round and inject great quantities of trace gases and particulates . Nonetheless there is still uncertainly as to their global spatial and temporal distribution.. In this study, global, daily, daytime NOAA-AVHRR data at 1 km spatial resolution, from April 1992 to March 1993 have been processed to give the positions of active vegetation fires. Fires were detected in every month of the year and over 70% of all fires were seen within the tropics. Grassland savanna fires accounted for the largest proportion. In addition to the detailed analysis of global fire distributions we have also explored methodologies for parameterising the key spatial and temporal aspects of the distributions.