Let us compare the current data which we can find on the websites of INPE Brazil with the NASA Active Fire Data on firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov.
How does a Brazilian prediction of the fire risk compare to an actual observation by a satellite?
Spots160320 =brazil[brazil.geometry.str.contains("-60.68428")] OK 0.07
At row 305 we find an outlier with a value of 777,7. I don't know yet if this is a mistype or a technical bug. I'll turn this value into 0.77 for better compliance with the other data.
In order to verify the (usefulness and) effectiveness of the predicted fire risk Risco de Fogo (RF), we need to link the predicted fire risk (area) to the actual observations of wild fires (point within the area) which have a FRP value. Lately I found out that there are at least 2 fire risk indici in use when you look at the 2020 datasets:
Risco | Risco de Fogo (RF 2019) | RF 2020 (predictions) | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Mínimo | RF ≤ 0,15 | 1 | ||
Baixo | 0,15 ≤ RF ≤ 0,40 | 2 | ||
Médio | 0,40 ≤ RF ≤ 0,70 | 3 | ||
Alto | 0,70 ≤ RF ≤ 0,95 | 4 | ||
Crítico | RF ≤ 0,95 | 5 |
For that particular outlier found in the Brazilian dataset, we found a match. It turns out that the NASA annotates its data with a confidence column. The confidence for this outlier has been marked as being "low".
Perhaps there is a reason for that strange value in the Brazilian dataset: to be able to filter it out more easily.
We add up the FRP's during 1 day, so we can compare it to the average.
In human terms: on March the 16th the observating satellites detected the emission of 3300 MegaWatts of energy in wavelengths that are known to quantify correctly the burning of diff. kind of vegetations.
At this moment of the year it is still the wet season in the Amazon.
So now we know the sums of the FRP for 3 states in Amozonia Legal at March 16th.
Filtering out the rows without frp or fire risk values.
Notice the sudden drop in average radiative power emitted starting from April 2018.
Starting April 2018 new data became accessible: the instrument Suomi NPP. The introduction of the Suomi NPP had 2 main reasons: the higher spatial resolution provided better location precision, and an extra orbiting satellite meant more coverage throughout 24 hours (mainly during the dark hours in this case).
But there is a drawback to witness here: adding much more numbers with lower values leads to lowering the average radiative power overall.
These gaps in observation windows are noticable in the fig. "FRP observations 16/03/2020".
Conclusions:
Let's add up the numbers for FRP in 2018 cumulatively...