Fire
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Fires have impacts on several identified radiative forcing agents. While they can be a natural part of many ecosystems, they have a strong human control, particularly in Tropical ecosystems. Fires contribute to the build-up of CO2 through deforestation and forest degradation, emissions from peatland fires, and alterations of fire regimes(more frequent, larger or more severe fires). They also emit CH4, and are a major source of aerosols, CO and oxides of nitrogen, thus affecting local and regional air quality. Estimates of greenhouse gas emissions due to fires are essential for realistic modelling of climate and its critical component, the global carbon cycle. Fires caused deliberately for land clearance (agriculture and ranching) or accidentally (lightning strikes and human error) are a major factor in land-cover variability and change, and hence affect fluxes of energy and water to the atmosphere. |
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| Domain: | Terrestrial | |
| Subdomain: | Biology | |
| Scientific Area: | Biosphere | |
| ECV Steward: | Emilio Chuvieco-Salinero | |
| Products: | Burned Area, Active Fires, Fire Radiative Power (FRP) | |
Average global annual Burned Area
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Figure: Average global annual Burned Area obtained from the FireCCI51 product for the period 2001-2017. Burned area detections were based on MODIS 250m near infrared reflectance and thermal anomalies (from Lizundia-Loiola et al., 2019, in review)
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ECV Products and Requirements
These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).
The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Fire.
| Products | Burned Area | Active Fires | Fire Radiative Power (FRP) | ||||||
| (*) | Unit | Values | Unit | Values | Unit | Values | |||
| Horizontal Resolution | G | m | 10 | m | 50 | m | 50 | ||
| B | 100 | 250 | 250 | ||||||
| T | 1000 | 5000 | 5000 | ||||||
| Vertical Resolution | G | - | - | - | |||||
| B | - | - | - | ||||||
| T | - | - | - | ||||||
| Temporal Resolution | G | d | 1 | min | 5 | min | 5 | ||
| B | 10 | 120 | 120 | ||||||
| T | 30 | 720 | 720 | ||||||
| Timeliness | G | d | 10 | d | 1 | d | 1 | ||
| B | 120 | 7 | 7 | ||||||
| T | 360 | 365 | 365 | ||||||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty | G | % | 5 | % | 5 | MW km-2 of detector ground footprint | 0.5 | ||
| B | 15 | 5 | 1 | ||||||
| T | 25 | 5 | 2 | ||||||
| Stability | G | % | 0 | % | 0 | % | 0 | ||
| B | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| T | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||||||
(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful.
Data Sources
This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.
- Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)
- Global burned area products generated by NASA
