Page History

Satellites and instruments (under development!)

Licence

Before downloading data, users must accept the Copernicus CAMS data licence

GFAS data access

Access to the archive is either:

• via the web (for sample data, limited to one year) using the ECMWF data server web interface:http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/cams-gfas/
• or through WebAPI, which is the method allowing users to download CAMS data in an operational programmatic way (using Python - example scripts are available).
  
  

• The gridded satellite data (stream=gfas, type=gsd) may be browsed through the GFAS catalogue and then retrieved via Web-API.
  
  

• 
  

  Expand
  title Latest seven days of GFAS data are also available through the FTP Dissemination server.
  Note that for the convenience of users who cannot use the ECMWF data server (either via the interactive web interface or through the ECMWF WebAPI), the latest seven days of GFAS data are also available through the FTP Dissemination server. On the FTP server, the new GFAS data becomes available with several hours delay compared to the ECMWF data server. If you wish to have an FTP account setup, please contact Copernicus User Support at ECMWF. EXAMPLE describing explicitly what is in the files and how the data is described in file headers of GFAS data files on the FTP server. This file contains the analysis from 28 November between 00:00 - 23:59 analysis: /DATA/CAMS_GFAS/20171128> ls *frpfire.grib -rw-r--r--    1 anonymou ec         25920120 Nov 29 05:18 z_cams_c_ecmf_20171128000000_gfas_an_sfc_frpfire.grib > grib_ls -p date,time,step z_cams_c_ecmf_20171128000000_gfas_an_sfc_frpfire.grib z_cams_c_ecmf_20171128000000_gfas_an_sfc_frpfire.grib date        time        step        20171128    0           0-24

  
  

GFAS data file name and file format

GFAS File format is GRIB. See What are GRIB files and How to read or decode a GRIB file for more information.

GFAS Maps

The latest daily Fire Radiative Power (FRP) analysis from GFAS is available here. The map represents the thermal radiation measured from space-borne sensors and detected as coming from actively burning vegetation and other open fires. It is expressed as the daily average of the fire radiative power (FRP) observations made in 125 km grid cells and expressed in the units of [mW/m²]. The rate of release of thermal radiation by a fire is believed to be related to the rate at which fuel is being consumed and smoke produced. Therefore, these daily averaged FRP areal intensity data are used in the global estimation of open vegetation fire trace gas and particulate emissions. 

Archived Fire Radiative Power maps (global and by selected areas) are available here for the past 5 days.

Known issues

• 3 July 2018: GFAS production moved to ECMWF operations; standard output updated to include altitude of plume bottom and injection height from IS4FIRES.
• 23-27 June 2018: Limited MODIS FRP observations being used in daily NRT GFAS processing.
• 19 December 2016: Aqua and Terra MODIS FRP data changed from collection 5 to collection 6.
• 8-9 August 2016: no Aqua MODIS data available leading to reduced GFAS emissions over Africa and South America - all other regions seem to be unaffected.
• 22 April 2016: Terra MODIS data reintroduced to GFAS processing.
• 1 March 2016: Terra MODIS removed from GFAS processing.
• 24 February - 4 March 2016: anomalous FRP values associated with degraded Terra MODIS data being used in GFAS.
  • Updated 20 September 2016: GFAS FRP values for these dates have been recalculated using Aqua MODIS data only and have replaced the anomalous values in the GFAS catalogue. For users that have downloaded the GFAS data for these dates, we recommend to download them again.

How to cite the CAMS GFAS

Please acknowledge the use of the CAMS GFAS as stated in the Copernicus CAMS License agreement:

...

Any such publication or distribution shall state that "neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains."

References

• Francesca Di Giuseppe, Samuel Rémy, Florian Pappenberger, and Fredrik Wetterhall, 2018: Combining fire radiative power observations with the fire weather index improves the estimation of fire emissions, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 18, 5359–5370, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2017-790

• Rémy, S., A. Veira, R. Paugam, M. Sofiev, J. W. Kaiser, F. Marenco, S. P. Burton, A. Benedetti, R. J. Engelen, R. Ferrare, and J. W. Hair, 2017: Two global data sets of daily fire emission injection heights since 2003, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 2921-2942, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-2921-2017.
• N. Andela (VUA), J.W. Kaiser (ECMWF, KCL), A. Heil (FZ Jülich), T.T. van Leeuwen (VUA), G.R. van der Werf (VUA), M.J. Wooster (KCL), S. Remy (ECMWF) and M.G. Schultz (FZ Jülich), Assessment of the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFASv1). [PDF]
• Kaiser, J. W., Heil, A., Andreae, M. O., Benedetti, A., Chubarova, N., Jones, L., Morcrette, J.-J., Razinger, M., Schultz, M. G., Suttie, M., and van der Werf, G. R. (2012). Biomass burning emissions estimated with a global fire assimilation system based on observed fire radiative power. BG, 9:527-554. [PDF]
• Xu et al. (2010) New GOES imager algorithms for cloud and active fire detection and fire radiative power assessment across North, South and Central America. RSE Vol. 114 [PDF]
• Heil et al. (2010) Assessment of the Real-Time Fire Emissions (GFASv0) by MACC, ECMWF Tech. Memo No. 628 [PDF]
• Di Giuseppe, F, Remy, S, Pappenberger, F, Wetterhall, F (2016): Improving GFAS and CAMS biomass burning estimations by means of the Global ECMWF Fire Forecast system (GEFF), ECMWF Tech. Memo No. 790 [PDF]

Related articles

...