Journal article
Thermodynamically constrained retrieval algorithm to estimate subpixel fire properties
Remote sensing of environment, Vol.328, 114871
10/01/2025
DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2025.114871
Abstract
Satellite-based measurements have been widely used for estimating fire-emitted pollutants based on the parameters of either burned area or fire radiative power (FRP). Fire-related remote sensing additionally requires information on active fire areas and fire temperature at a subpixel scale, as well as the combustion phases (i.e., smoldering and flaming) to infer the plume injection height and to understand the mechanics of resulting atmospheric processes like pyro-convection. The FRP is as a key indicator of fire intensity that is frequently retrieved using infrared signals. The fire properties at a subpixel level, including the effective fire temperature and fire area, can be retrieved by the bi-spectral method. However, these approaches normally neglect the heat transport phenomena and subsequently fail to characterize the fire area that could be composed of different combustion phases (e.g. smoldering, flaming, or a combination of the two). Neglecting the phenomena of heat transfer leads to mis-estimation of the actual fire area and its associated emission profile for combustion products that are a function of the combustion phase. To address this challenge, this work presents a new approach to resolve the effective temperature variation inside each fire pixel using a semi-empirical heat-transfer algorithm. This algorithm utilizes radiance observations from geostationary satellites as inputs. With the aid of fine-spatial-resolution spaceborne and airborne observations, we evaluated and validated the fire retrieval performance on western US wildfires corresponding to the 2019 season. Our results show that FRP obtained through this heat-transfer method exhibits a stronger linear correlation with those retrieved from airborne measurements. Moreover, by analyzing the temperature variation curve obtained using this method, it is possible to further retrieve the fire area under different combustion conditions within the fire pixels.
•Resolved the temperature variation function in each fire pixel through a heat transfer algorithm.•The retrieved fire radiative power is consistent with those from airborne measurements.•This method retrieves fire area and proportion of different combustion phases at subpixel level.•Smoldering accounts for over 50 % of the total active fire areas in the studied Williams Flats fire.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Thermodynamically constrained retrieval algorithm to estimate subpixel fire properties
- Creators
- Chenchong Zhang - Stanford UniversityYuan Wang - Stanford UniversityJun Wang - University of IowaAmber Soja - Langley Research CenterEmily Gargulinski - Langley Research CenterDavid Peterson - Marine Meteorology Division, US Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, CA 93943, USAOlga Kalashnikova - Jet Propulsion LaboratoryBin Zhao - Tsinghua UniversityYafang Cheng - Max Planck Institute for ChemistryFangjun Li - South Dakota State UniversityRajan Chakrabarty - Washington University in St. Louis
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Remote sensing of environment, Vol.328, 114871
- Publisher
- Elsevier Inc
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.rse.2025.114871
- ISSN
- 0034-4257
- eISSN
- 1879-0704
- Grant note
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: NNH20ZDA001N-ACCDAM National Science Foundation: NA16OAR4310104 US Department of Energy: AGS-1455215, AGS-1926817 McDonnell International Scholars Academy at Washington University in St. Louis: DE-SC0021011 NASA's Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction (MAP) Program: 80HQTR21T0099 U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's 6.2 Base ProgramCompact Fire Infrared Radiance Spectral Tracker (c-FIRST) project
Chenchong Zhang, Yuan Wang, and Olga Kalashnikova were supported by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) project. This research has also been supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (grant no. NNH20ZDA001N-ACCDAM) , the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (grant no. NA16OAR4310104) , the National Science Foundation (grant nos. AGS-1455215 and AGS-1926817) and the US Department of Energy (grant no. DE-SC0021011) . Chenchong Zhang was partially supported by the McDonnell International Scholars Academy at Washington University in St. Louis. NASA's Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction (MAP) Program (80HQTR21T0099) and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's 6.2 Base Program provided additional support for David Peterson. Olga Kalashnikova at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was also supported by the Compact Fire Infrared Radiance Spectral Tracker (c-FIRST) project.
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/01/2025
- Academic Unit
- Electrical and Computer Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Physics and Astronomy; Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
- Record Identifier
- 9984833482602771
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