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NASA FIRMS Active Fire Data

Near-real-time satellite detections of active fires and thermal anomalies for monitoring hotspots, mapping risk, and supporting emergency analysis.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Small · 0.001–0.1 GB
Formats
CSV, JSON, Shapefile, KML
Access
Download or API
API key
Required
Provider
NASA Earthdata FIRMS
Updates
Near real time
Data terms
NASA Earthdata CC0 data-use policy

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

FIRMS publishes frequently refreshed thermal-anomaly detections from Earth- observing satellites. Start with one sensor and one recent day before expanding the area or time window. Each point is a satellite detection, not confirmation of a fire on the ground.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • A free NASA FIRMS MAP_KEY saved in the NASA_FIRMS_MAP_KEY environment variable
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Request a free MAP_KEY from the official FIRMS API page.
  2. 2.Save the key in the NASA_FIRMS_MAP_KEY environment variable.
  3. 3.Run the example to retrieve the latest global VIIRS NOAA-20 detections.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas

import os
import pandas as pd

map_key = os.environ["NASA_FIRMS_MAP_KEY"]
url = (
    "https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/api/area/csv/"
    f"{map_key}/VIIRS_NOAA20_NRT/world/1"
)
fires = pd.read_csv(url)
print(fires[["latitude", "longitude", "acq_date", "frp"]].head())
4

Test a useful signal

Locate today's strongest thermal anomalies

Find where the latest day's highest-radiative-power detections cluster without treating them as confirmed fires.

  1. 01Convert acquisition date and time into one timestamp column.
  2. 02Filter detections above the 90th percentile of fire radiative power.
  3. 03Plot the remaining coordinates, describe the largest clusters, and state why detections require confirmation.

Dataset details

NASA Earthdata FIRMS is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-10. Temporal coverage: 2000-present.

Domains

WildfiresEarth ObservationEmergency Management

Data types

GeospatialTime Series

Tasks

Hotspot MonitoringSpatial AnalysisRisk Mapping

Geography

Global

Formats

CSVJSONShapefileKML

Provider

NASA Earthdata FIRMS

Data terms

NASA Earthdata CC0 data-use policy