Holy Fire in southern California, as viewed by 4 GOES

By Scott Bachmeier • 9 August 2018

Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images from GOES-15, GOES-14, GOES-17 and GOES-16 [click to play MP4 animation]

 * GOES-17 images shown here are preliminary and non-operational *

GOES-15 (GOES-West), GOES-14, GOES-17 and GOES-16 (GOES-East) Shortwave Infrared (3.9 µm) images (above) showed the thermal anomaly or “hot spot” (black to yellow to red pixels) associated with the Holy Fire that was burning in southern California on 09 August 2018. This comparison demonstrates how fire detection can be affected by both satellite viewing angle and shortwave infrared detector spatial resolution (4 km at satellite sub-point for the GOES-14/15 Imager, vs 2 km for the GOES-16/17 ABI).

On the previous day, a 30-meter resolution Landsat-8 False Color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) image visualized using RealEarth (below) provided a more detailed view of the Holy Fire, showing active fires (brighter red) around the northern and eastern perimeter of the burn scar and the smoke plume that was drifting to the north and northwest.

Landsat-8 False Color RGB image [click to enlarge]

Categories: Fire detection, GOES-14, GOES-15, GOES-16, GOES-17, Landsat, RealEarth, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images