Wildfires around the world - satellite fire map
Each dot is a place where a NASA satellite detected fire in the last day. The bigger and brighter the dot, the more fires nearby. Below are the countries with the most fires and a list of large wildfires.
Fire map
Where the most fires are burning
| # | Country | Fires |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tanzania | 7,317 |
| 2 | Brazil | 6,965 |
| 3 | Australia | 5,695 |
| 4 | Mozambique | 5,170 |
| 5 | South Sudan | 3,471 |
| 6 | Indonesia | 3,382 |
| 7 | Zambia | 3,348 |
| 8 | China | 2,724 |
| 9 | Bolivia | 2,591 |
| 10 | Sudan | 2,559 |
| 11 | Fiji | 1,771 |
| 12 | Madagascar | 1,653 |
| 13 | India | 1,628 |
| 14 | Malawi | 1,383 |
| 15 | United States | 1,192 |
Large wildfires now
Fires that emergency services have logged as major incidents, from NASA EONET, mostly in the US and Canada.
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What the map shows
The NOAA-20 satellite and its VIIRS instrument circle the Earth twice a day and see every place on the planet. They pick up spots much hotter than their surroundings, even small fires a few hundred metres across.
Most of these hotspots are forest, grass and crop fires. Some are other heat sources such as gas flares at oil wells, steel works or volcanoes. That is why we talk about fire detections, not the number of separate fires.
The page shows data for the whole previous day. We refresh it once a day.
FAQ
Where does the fire data come from?
From NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System), which collects fire detections from satellites. We use the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite at 375 m resolution.
Is every dot a wildfire?
Not always. The satellite detects places much hotter than their surroundings. Usually that is fire, but it can also be a gas flare, a steel plant or a volcano.
Why are there so many fires in Africa and South America?
In the dry season people burn grassland and fields there, and fire also spreads into forests. That makes these regions the busiest for fire detections every year.
How often is the map updated?
Once a day. We show all detections from the previous day in UTC.
Data: NASA FIRMS (VIIRS, NOAA-20) via NASA GIBS; large wildfires: NASA EONET. Land: Natural Earth.