Sentinel-3 Satellite Applications in the Monitoring of the Active Forest Fires
Calle, Abel1; González-Alonso, Federico2
1University of Valladolid, SPAIN; 2CIFOR-INIA, SPAIN

Following the GCOS (Global Climate Observing System) document ''Systematic Observation Requirements for Satellite-based products for Climate'', and ESA Climate Initiative, the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and aerosols from fires are important climate forcing factors, contributing on average between 25-35% of total CO2 emissions to the atmosphere, as well as CO, methane and aerosols.

Forest fires monitoring, over Mediterranean areas, covers several topics as risk maps, cartography of burnt areas, detection and fire retrieval parameters. The main magnitudes are FRE (Fire Radiative Energy), in the case of geostationary platforms, and FRP (Fire Radiative Power), in the case of polar orbiting satellites, involved in the assessment of fire severity and ecological consequences of fires; they would be the starting point to evaluate burning emissions. The product of fire detection provided by the ATSR World Fire Atlas has been a valuable tool indispensable for tracking active fires.

The GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), is an initiative of the European Commission and the ESA which objective is evaluate the European capacity for the provision and use of operational services. The contribution of GMES to the topic of forest fires is represented by the future satellite Sentinel-3: today, with the interruption of Envisat services, the study of suitability of algorithms to be implemented on Sentinel-3 is a necessary scientific task.

The instrument Sentinel-3/SLSTR (Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer) sensor improves the along-track-scanning dual-view technique of AATSR and provides advanced atmospheric correction. SLSTR measures in nine spectral channels. This proposal is addressed to work on this instrument trying to get conclusion about the more suitable algorithm to use in order to detect and monitoring active fires.