Using the Short-Wave Infrared for Nocturnal Detection of Combustion Sources in VIIRS Data

Night-time images from the SNPP satellite VIIRS scanning radiometer in visible and infrared spectral bands provide invaluable data for detection and characterization of natural and technological combustion sources on the surface of the Earth, such as forest fires, gas flares, steel mills or active volcanoes. The presence of sub-pixel hot infrared (IR) emission sources can be readily detected at night in 1.6 micron near-infrared M10 channel. Their temperature and radiant heat intensity can be estimated by fitting of the Planck black-body spectral curve to the observed radiances of VIIRS infrared M-channels out to 4 um. VIIRS instrument is sensitive to the IR sources over a wide range of temperatures. This method can discriminate low temperature sources such as volcanoes and forest fires from the high temperature gas flares with 300 m average location error. The processing includes correction for panoramic “bow-tie” effect and filtering of the false detections resulting from sensor bombardment by the cosmic rays, especially at the aurora rings and at the South Atlantic anomaly. False detections can be largely removed by correlating of the observed bright spots in M10 channel with other infrared and the visible day-night band. NGDC NOAA provides global daily detection products for thousands of IR sources as KMZ vector maps and as CSV tables.