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Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product

The HMS is an interactive processing system that allows the trained satellite analysts in the Satellite Analysis Branch (SAB), within the Satellite Services Division (SSD), to manually integrate data from various automated fire detection algorithms with GOES and polar (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Fire Algorithm (MODIS) and Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System (DMSP/OLS)) images. The result is a quality controlled display of the locations of fires and significant smoke plumes detected by meteorological satellites.

The most recent HMS product, and the automated layers used to create it, can best be viewed through our SSD Fire Web-GIS page.

• Smoke Text Products (Latest)
• NEW - HMS Keyhole Markup Language (KML) Files

Analysis for day 9/15/2008 last updated at 9/16/2008 2:39:16 GMT
Fires are in red.  Fire size has been increased so fires are visible in this large view.
Smoke, when detected by the analyst, is in gray.

For the majority of the burning season which approximately covers the period from March through June, responsibility for analyzing fire locations and smoke extent over Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and the Bahamas will be assumed by the Mexican Meteorological Service (Sevicio Meteorologico Nacional). The analysis for these areas may not be available every day, particularly on the weekends and Mexican Holidays. In these cases and during the other months of the year outside of the burning season, NESDIS will perform the fire analysis over Cuba, the Bahamas, and northern Mexico and analyze significant smoke over the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Pacific. Automated fire detection points for GOES(ABBA) , AVHRR(FIMMA) , and MODIS will still be available at all times.

Download most current fire files (available in ASCII, GIS and graphic formats).

This product is also available via a geospatial archive at the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC).

The locations of any significant smoke-producing fires are fed daily to the Smoke Forecasting Demo Project at NOAA's Air Resources Lab. If you like this Demo please contact us, as we are collecting requirements to make this program operational.

A new pre-operational product, the GOES Aerosol/Smoke Product (GASP), is now available online.

The information on fire position should be used as a general guidance and for strategic planning. Tactical decisions, such as the activation of a response to fight these fires, should not be made without other information to corroborate the fire's existence and location. Users should note:

• Areas outlined by green in the graphic above are the focus of the analysis. Coverage outside the 48 contiguous US states will typically be turned on seasonally or as significant smoke impacts the US.
• The HMS product for any given day is created and updated by a satellite analyst between 1pm and 11pm Eastern time. After 11pm, the analysis is fine-tuned as time permits. The final product for the previous day is "completed" for the archive at the beginning of the next day's fire shift.
• The fire sizes depicted in the product are primarily determined by the field of view of the satellite instrument, or the resolution of the analysis tool. They should not be used to estimate specific fire perimeters.

Individual Fire Layers

• ABBA - Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm
• FIMMA - Fire Identification Mapping and Monitoring Algorithm
• MODIS - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Fire Algorithm