Published October 1, 2024 | Published
Journal Article

Characterizing fire and fire atmospheric states from space using collocated hyperspectral infrared sounding and narrow-band imagery

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon University of California, Los Angeles
  • 3. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 4. ROR icon University of California, Riverside
  • 5. ROR icon University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

Abstract

Under the influence of global climate change, wildfires are becoming increasingly significant within ecosystems. Satellite technology offers a critical perspective for studying fire. The synergy of high-spatial resolution narrow-band imagers and hyperspectral infrared (IR) sounders allow for comprehensive observation and long-term global monitoring of fire characteristics and associated atmospheric changes on the pixel scale. This study demonstrates methods to utilize the pixel-scale collocated fire observations from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the IR radiance spectra from the Cross Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), onboard NASA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite, to analyze fire and the atmospheric conditions before, during, and after fires. Two months of satellite observations over the Southwest United States and the Amazonia regions when large fires occurred in the regions of interest (October 2017 and August 2020) are used. Our findings reveal that CrIS has high sensitivity to fire that affects as little as 1% of its field of view (FOV) with FOV total fire radiative power (FRP) larger than 200 MW (MW) at night and 1000 MW during the day. By employing spectral principal component analysis (PCA), the CrIS spectral signature to atmospheric temperature, humidity, and trace gases corresponding to fire characteristics are quantified. This approach highlights that collocated imager and IR sounder data, when paired with PCA, provide a powerful method to effectively identify and monitor wildfires. This technique also allows for the observation of subsequent atmospheric alterations while managing data volume efficiently, ensuring that crucial spectral information is preserved. This methodology advances our ability to understand and respond to the multifaceted impacts of wildfires on both local and global scales, reinforcing the value of integrated satellite observations in environmental science.

Copyright and License

© 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

Funding

The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). XZ and QY were supported by the NASA Decadal Survey Incubator program. QY was also supported by NASA's Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program. QY and EF acknowledge the support of the AIRS Project at JPL and the sounder SIPS at JPL. LT was partially supporting by the UC Riverside Central Fellowship for Graduate Studies. YLY acknowledge support from the Anna Tai foundation to Caltech.

Contributions

Xuyang Zhou: Writing – original draft, Software, Formal analysis. Qing Yue: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Software, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. King-Fai Li: Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Formal analysis, Data curation. Evan Fishbein: Writing – review & editing, Software, Data curation. Xiuhong Chen: Writing – review & editing, Software, Data curation. Lin Tan: Writing – review & editing. Sally Newman: Writing – review & editing. Eric Fetzer: Funding acquisition, Data curation. Yuk L. Yung: Writing – review & editing, Resources, Project administration.

Data Availability

VIIRS/NPP Thermal Anomalies/Fire 6-Min L2 Swath 750 m V001 was obtained from NASA EOSDIS Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VNP14.001).
 
SNPP-CrIS Level 1B Full Spectral Resolution V3 (SNPPCrISL1B) data was obtained from the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data Information and Services Center (GESDISC) (https://doi.org/10.5067/ZCRSHBM5HB23).
 
SNPP CrIS-VIIRS 750-m Matchup Indexes V1 (SNPP_CrIS_VIIRS750m_IND) was obtained from NASA GESDISC (https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/WVCC/DATA211).
 
SNPP-CrIS effective cloud fraction data was obtained from the Sounder SIPS SNPP CLIMCAPS Full Spectral Resolution Version 2 Level 2 Atmosphere cloud and surface geophysical state retrieval products at GESDISC (https://doi.org/10.5067/62SPJFQW5Q9B).

Additional details

Created:
September 23, 2024
Modified:
September 30, 2024