In recent years fires have increasing regional and global impact on the environment. Biomass burning is a major source of trace gases and aerosols in the atmosphere. Smoke and haze carry vast amounts of atmospheric pollutants like CO₂, CO, NO_x thus aggravating the anticipated climate change and greenhouse warming. It is estimated that wildfires could account for up to 40% of the annual global greenhouse gas emissions (Crutzen & Andrea, 1990; Malingreaux Gregoire, 1996).

The EU (SAI) has started a research project to monitor vegetation fires on a global scale. Its aim is to provide a global map of daily fire occurrence. The result is a set of co-ordinates providing the geographical location of detected fire events. These data can be used to locate burned areas in the field for active fire fighting and to derive estimates of the amount of biomass burned in order to assess greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol production.

The upper Figure shows the global pattern of fire occurrences in February 1997, the lower in September 1997. Each red dot represents a hotspot detected by the AVHRR instrument on NOAA satellites. While in February fires occure predominantly in the African savannas, in September major fire activity is found in South America and SE-Asia.

More information at:
http://www.mtv.sai.jrc.it/projects/fire/wfw/fact_sheet.html