The Global Geostationary Wildfire ABBA: Current Implementation and Future Plans

The Wild Fire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm (WF_ABBA), developed at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), has a long legacy of operational near real-time wildfire detection and characterization in the Western Hemisphere. The first phase of the global geostationary WF_ABBA was made operational at NOAA NESDIS in 2009 and currently includes diurnal active fire monitoring from GOES-East, GOES-South America, GOES-West, Meteosat-9 and MTSAT-1R/-2. This allows for near global active fire monitoring with coverage of Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific utilizing distinct geostationary sensors and a consistent algorithm. Version 6.5.006 of the WF_ABBA was specifically designed to address the capabilities and limitations of diverse geostationary sensors and requests from the global fire monitoring and user community. This presentation will provide an overview of version 6.5.006 of the global WF_ABBA fire product including the new fire and opaque cloud mask and associated metadata. We will demonstrate the WF_ABBA showing examples from around the globe with a focus on the capabilities and plans for integrating new geostationary platforms with coverage of Eastern Europe and Asia (INSAT-3D, Korean COMS, Russian GOMS Elektro-L MSU-GS). We are also preparing for future fire monitoring in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Africa utilizing the next generation GOES-R Imager and Meteosat Third Generation Flexible Combined Imager (MTG - FCI). The goal is to create a globally consistent long-term fire product utilizing the capabilities of each of these unique operational systems and a common fire detection algorithm. On an international level, development of a global geostationary fire monitoring system is supported by the IGOS GOFC/GOLD Fire Implementation Team. This work also generally supports Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) activities and the Group on Earth Observations (GEO).