Aqua MODIS Daily Fire and Thermal Anomalies Swath Data

Daily 5-minute swath data from the Aqua MODIS satellite for detecting thermal anomalies and fires. This dataset is foundational for generating higher-level fire products and can identify phenomena like volcanoes. It was produced by NASA but has been decommissioned as of July 31, 2023, with users directed to the newer Version 6.1 product.

Use Cases

• Identifying active wildfires and their locations from thermal anomaly pixels.
• Monitoring volcanic activity through detected thermal signatures.
• Analyzing fire occurrence over water, such as from oil rigs, using processed ocean and coastline pixels.
• Studying land surface temperature and thermal properties from the swath imagery.
• Serving as an input layer for generating aggregated, higher-level regional or global fire products.

Strengths

• Provides daily global coverage with 5-minute temporal increments for frequent observation.
• Includes refinements for detecting small fires using dynamic thresholding and reducing false alarms in forested areas like the Amazon.
• Processes ocean pixels to detect fires over water, expanding detection capability beyond land.

Limitations

• The dataset is decommissioned (as of July 31, 2023), indicating it is not the current operational version.
• Known issues include pre-November 2000 data quality, detection confidence flags, and an instrument outage in August 2020.
• Specific row counts, column names, and exact data size are not provided across any source.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Collected daily from the Aqua satellite's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument.

Time Range

Coverage spans from the Aqua satellite's operational start until product decommissioning on July 31, 2023.

Freshness

2026-03-12 23:46:24.650838

Geography

Global coverage, with each data swath approximately 2,030 km along track and 2,300 km across track.