Temporal and spatial variability in biomass burned areas across the USA derived from the GOES fire product

Abstract

Burned area is a critical input to the algorithms of biomass burning emissions and understanding variability in fire activity due to climate change but it is difficult to estimate. This study presents a robust algorithm to reconstruct the patterns in burned areas across Contiguous United States (CONUS) in diurnal, seasonal, and interannual scales from 2000–2006. Specifically, burned areas in individual fire pixels are empirically calculated using diurnal variations in instantaneous fire sizes from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) WF_ABBA (Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm) fire product. GOES burned areas exhibit diurnal variability with a temporal scale of half hours. The cumulative burned area during 9:00–16:00 local solar time accounts for 65%–81% of the total daily burned area. The diurnal variability is strongest in croplands compared to shrublands, grasslands, savannas, and forests. Analysis on a seasonal scale indicates that over 56% of burning occurs during summer (June–August). On average, the total annual burned area during the last seven years is 2.12 × 10 4 ± 0.41 × 10 4 km 2. The algorithm developed in this study can be applied to obtain burned area from the detections of GOES active fires at near real time, which can greatly improve the estimates of biomass burning emissions needed for predicting air quality.