0:00	Fire is a global phenomenon. It occurs everywhere, and Earth, in many regards, is a fire planet.
0:08	So we see fires in Africa from agricultural burning. We see big fires in the boreal region.
0:16	We see big fires in the Brazilian Amazon related to deforestation. Clearly the only way to
0:23	get this global picture is from satellites. Satellites are able to detect fires because
0:30	the radiation emitted by the fires – basically these hot targets – is very specific, and
0:37	if we have a sensor that is sensitive to that radiative signal, that will enable us to distinguish
0:45	that area where there’s a hot target, typically a fire, from the non-burning background conditions.
0:52	The sensor is so sensitive to the heat signature that a rather small fire can be detected,
0:58	and very often you see the heat signature before you see the smoke. It is important
1:02	to see not only where the fire is currently, but also the history of that and the spread…and
1:08	basically we call that the burned areas. It is important to map the burned areas because
1:14	that is another way of estimating how much emission occurred, how much vegetation burned,
1:21	and how much of that burning actually emitted gases and particulate matter into the atmosphere.
1:28	And also, it is an indicator of the ecosystem change. What happened to that area? What happened
1:34	to the vegetation over that area? What was the aerial extent? And also, what is very
1:39	important is to measure what was the severity of the fire? The new NPP satellite and the
1:46	GOES-R satellite, when it gets launched, will provide us much better capability for fire
1:51	observation and characterization from the NOAA missions. Fires have a diurnal cycle
1:57	of activity, and the daytime mid-afternoon observations are the ones that provide the
2:04	most information because that’s when we have the most fires occurring in most parts
2:08	of the world.