ECV Products and Requirements for Fire
These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2016 (GCOS-200). GCOS is reviewing and will update the requirements until 2022. More information on: gcos.wmo.int.
| PRODUCT | DEFINITION | FREQ. | RES. | REQUIRED MEASUREMENT UNCERTAINTY | STAB. | REF. |
| Burnt Area | Burned area means the area affected by the fire, including natural vegetation and croplands. X_area means the horizontal area occupied by X within the grid cell. The extent of an individual grid cell is defined by the horizontal coordinates and any associated coordinate bounds or by a string valued auxiliary coordinate variable with a standard name of region. | 24 hours | 30m | 15% (error of omission and commission), compared to 30 m observations | None | |
| Active Fire Maps | Presence of a temporal thermal anomaly within a grid cell. Those thermal anomalies that are permanent should be linked to other sources of thermal emission (volcanos, gas flaring, industrial or power plants). Generally, the active fire maps are defined by the date/hour when the thermal anomaly was detected | 6 hours at all latitudes from Polar-Orbiting and 1 hour from Geostationary | 0.25-1 km (Polar); 1-3 km (Geo) | 5% error of commission; 10% error of omission; Based on per-fire comparisons for fires above target threshold of 5 MW/km² equivalent integrated FRP per pixel (i.e. for a 0.5 km² pixel the target threshold would be 2.5 MW, for a 9 km² pixel it would be 45 MW). | None | |
| Fire Radiative Power | Amount of energy released by area unit. Commonly it is expressed in W/m2. This variable is a function of actual temperature of the active fire at the satellite overpass and the proportion of the grid cell being burned. | 6 hours at all latitudes from Polar-Orbiting and 1 hour from Geostationary | 0.25-1 km (Polar); 1-3 km (Geo) | 10% integrated over pixel. Based on target detection threshold of 5 MW/km² equivalent integrated FRP per pixel (i.e. for a 0.5 km² pixel the target threshold would be 2.5 MW, for a 9 km² pixel it would be 45 MW).and with the same detection accuracy as the Active Fire Maps. | None |
