Ground-Based Corroboration of GOES-17 Fire Detection Capabilities During Ignition of the Kincade Fire

Abstract

Corroboration of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-17 (GOES-17) wildland fire detection capabilities occurred during the 24 October 2019 (evening of 23 October LST) ignition of the Kincade Fire in northern California. Post-analysis of remote sensing data compared to observations by the ALERTWildfire fire surveillance video system suggests that the emerging Kincade Fire hotspot was visually evident in GOES17 shortwave infrared imagery 52 s after the initial near-infrared heat source detected by the ground-based camera network. GOES-17 Advanced Baseline Imager Fire Detection Characteristic algorithms registered the fire 5 min after ignition. These observations represent the first documented comparative dataset between fire initiation and satellite detection, and thus provide context for GOES-16/17 wildland fire detections.

Observations of a rotating pyroconvective plume

“…These data first indicate warming beyond background temperature at 19:10 UTC, which is ~20 min after the helicopter ignition. This lag is due to the pixel resolution and sensor sensitivity, which often require the fire to grow upscale or intensify before detection, though hot fires can sometimes be detected very quickly (Lindley et al 2016(Lindley et al , 2020. A subsequent rapid increase in 3.9 µm brightness temperature occurs at 20:00 UTC, shortly preceding the development of the deep pyroCu.…”

Deep Learning Approach to Improve Spatial Resolution of GOES-17 Wildfire Boundaries Using VIIRS Satellite Data

“…However, due to its low spatial resolution, the GOES-R active fire product has been found to be unreliable, with a false alarm rate of around 60% to 80% for medium-and low-confidence fire pixels [19]. While it may struggle with some fire detections, GOES-R's performance is commendable for many high-impact fires, as demonstrated by studies such as Lindley et al (2020) [20] for the Kincade Fire.…”