MODIS/Aqua MYD14A1: Daily Fire and Thermal Anomalies at 1km Resolution

MYD14A1 Version 6 data product from NASA's Aqua satellite provides daily thermal anomalies and fire detection at 1 kilometer spatial resolution. The product was decommissioned on July 31, 2023, and users are encouraged to use the Version 6.1 successor. It packages eight consecutive days of fire data into a single file, containing layers for fire mask, pixel quality, maximum fire radiative power, and fire pixel position.

Use Cases

• Monitor wildfire occurrence and intensity based on the fire mask and maximum fire radiative power layers.
• Assess detection confidence and data quality for thermal anomalies using the pixel quality indicators.
• Track fire pixel location and behavior within the satellite scan based on the position layer.
• Analyze fire detection over water bodies, including from oil rigs, as enabled by Version 6 processing improvements.

Strengths

• Provides daily fire data aggregated into convenient eight-day packages.
• Includes refinements to reduce false alarms in specific regions like the Amazon.
• Processes ocean and coastline pixels to detect fires from sources like oil rigs.

Limitations

• The Version 6 product is decommissioned; users must migrate to Version 6.1.
• Known issues exist, including pre-November 2000 data quality and an August 2020 Aqua outage.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Generated from the Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument.

Freshness

Last metadata update was 2026-03-13, but the data product itself was decommissioned in July 2023.

Geography

Global