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Wildfires

Image of 1988 Yellowstone ground fire
1988 Yellowstone Ground Fire

Wildland fires are the fastest growing fire threat. To help mitigate this problem, the NESDIS Satellite Services Division (SSD) provides real time environmental satellite data and derived products including the Hazard Mapping System (HMS) Fire and Smoke Product and the Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WFABBA) product.

HMS is an interactive processing system that allows trained satellite analysts in SSD to manually integrate data from various automated fire detection algorithms with GOES and polar satellite images. The result is a quality-controlled display of the location of fires and significant smoke plumes detected by meteorological satellites.

The WFABBA algorithm uses GOES satellite data to detect and monitor fires and smoke associated with wildfires.