Fire monitoring and detection using brightness-temperature difference and water vapor emission from the atmospheric infrared sounder

Abstract

Radiance data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on board NASA's Aqua satellite provide an opportunity for fire detection. As wildfires play an increasingly great role in the environments of the United States West Coast, emergency teams face an ever-challenging task of mitigation and prediction. Furthermore, the increasing rate of wildfires in the American West Coast places an ever-increasing strain on ecosystems and global climate. Of particular interest is the ability to create effective near real-time (NRT) imaging and prediction. Advances in this field can play a crucial role in assisting wildfire detection and monitoring. Typical sources for satellite fire imaging study are the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), and the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instruments, but we present AIRS as complementary to these instruments with a new method of hotspot analysis. In this study, we propose a new method of fire detection by using AIRS's cloud-cleared radiance to detect hotspots and find new applications for this method of retrieval. We present the fire detection algorithm and initial assessments showing AIRS's ability to detect fires. In addition, we notice that there is more water vapor from the surface to the upper troposphere during the fire event as a result of biomass burning and an increase in air temperature.