Fire and air quality resources
Get up-to-date information on active fires, smoke, wind, and air quality
Every year, tens of thousands of wildfires burn millions of acres in the United States, blanketing one community after another in smoke. Our team of fire experts at CIRES and CU Boulder has compiled a list of go-to resources that provide up-to-date information on how the wildfires are progressing, the smoke transport in the atmosphere, and impacts on air quality. These efforts draw on many different sources of information — from local air quality monitoring stations to satellites in space. They represent how big data, and the hundreds of scientists behind those data, are helping us understand fire. Always check with your local emergency department for specific information on evacuations and immediate threats to lives and property.
Resources
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Where are active fires in the United States?
Check out this interactive map from the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) US/Canada. This visualization platform provides fire incident data, including satellite-based detections from MODIS and VIIRS, active fire perimeters, NowCoast radar, and fire weather. You can download data in KML format (for viewing on Google Earth). To learn more about the number of fires and acres burned in the United States, visit the national statistics page from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). You can compare data from different years. You can also read the daily aggregation of incident reports, which provides a brief national summary of the fires that are burning and news related to these fires, a weather forecast, and daily summary statistics on the number of large and active fires, area burned, and percent contained by state.
Want to know more about specific fires and what they are doing?
Use the interactive map from the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) US/Canada. By looking at the map of the United States, you can click on fires of interest to get more information about the size and percent contained, often updated more than once a day for significant events.
Want to know more about the potential for fire in the United States?
Check out NOAA Global System Laboratory's Experimental Hourly Wildfire Potential (HWP) index, which is derived from the NOAA-HRRR model predictions of temperature, winds, and soil moisture conditions. To see a map, look for the “Hourly Wildfire Potential” parameter on the left side of the matrix table and click on one of the available maps from the same row.
What does the smoke look like in my state?
Check out the smoke forecast from NOAA-HRRR. This is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s smoke forecast visualization platform, showing global infrared satellite data, as well as surface visibility, vertically integrated smoke, near-surface smoke, and fire detections. Or you can zoom into your area with this global visualization from the Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch of CIRA, the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.
Do you want to see both fires and smoke?
ESRI’s USA Wildfires story map allows you to interactively explore active wildfires and smoke forecasts across the United States. Fire locations and perimeters are updated every 15 minutes from the Integrated Reporting of Wildland-Fire Information (IRWIN) and the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). Smoke forecasts from the National Weather Service also show a 48-hour forecast window in 1-hour increments. Or check out NOAA’s Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product. This site provides the locations of satellite fire detections and smoke observed from space. These observed smoke estimates are typically drawn in the afternoons. It is important to note that just because smoke is drawn does not mean that it is necessarily reaching the ground.
Want to see all kinds of aerosols (i.e., minute particles in the atmosphere)?
Check out AerosolWatch, which provides national and global maps of clouds, smoke, dust, aerosol concentrations, and more, updated every 10 minutes using data collected by the GEOS and VIIRS satellites.
Want to know what the wind is doing in your area? Or across the globe?
Windfinder provides current wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, air pressure, and tide forecasts from a global network of over 45,000 locations worldwide. Windfinder also provides an archive of wind data going back to 1999. Or check out EarthWindMap — a global map of supercomputer-forecasted wind strength and direction updated every three hours. This tool includes the option to overlay the concentrations of particulate matter that are harmful to humans (like PM2.5 that can be found in wildfire smoke) as detected by Earth-observing satellites.
How bad is the air near me?
Check out Smoke Sense. This app, developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, gives real-time air quality data on particulate matter and ozone, based on your location. It ties your location to the nearest monitoring station around the country. Similar information is also provided by AirNow. For just exploring particulate air pollution, check out the PurpleAir sensor map or openaq, an open-source air quality data network. To view forecasts of air quality in North America, check out the "experimental air quality index" from NOAA Global Systems Laboratory's RAP-Chem model, a coupled weather/air quality experimental forecasting system. You can also view chemical forecasts for the US from NCAR’s WRF-CHEM.
Is the air good enough to go for a walk in my neighborhood?
BreezoMeter is an app that indicates how far you are from active fires and the air quality and pollen forecast at the street level. The Breezometer global Air Quality Index or AQI (BAQI) considers all six major air pollutants (ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, fine particulate matter, and inhalable particle pollution) to provide a globally comparable air quality metric on your street.
What does air pollution look like around the planet?
Visit the World Air Quality Information site. This effort provides real-time air quality at 30,000 stations worldwide, with ratings ranging from good to hazardous. In addition to current air quality, this site also provides air quality information for the past 12 months around a particular station.
What are the air quality issues in the Western United States?
The Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP) is a voluntary partnership between states, tribes, federal land managers, local air agencies, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency to understand regional air quality issues in the West. WRAP develops, maintains, and shares data and results from various information sources to produce consistent, comparable, and complete results for use by member jurisdictions and agencies.
Individual states often provide their own wildfire, smoke, and air quality information. For example:
- Alaska: Alaska Interagency Coordination Center
- Arizona: Arizona Air Quality Forecasts
- California: California Smoke Blog
- Colorado: Department of Public Health air quality monitoring sites
- Idaho: Idaho Smoke Information
- Montana: Montana Smoke Forecasts
- New Mexico: Air Quality Bureau wildfire and prescribed fire smoke resources
- Oregon: Lane Air
- Washington: Washington Smoke Information
Jennifer Balch - Director of the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab, CIRES Fellow, whose research aims to understand why fire is changing and the consequences for ecosystems and people (jennifer.balch@colorado.edu).
Christine Wiedinmyer - CIRES Associate Director for Science and a chemical engineer whose research focuses on the emissions of pollutants to the atmosphere (including from wildfire) and their downwind impacts (christine.wiedinmyer@colorado.edu).
Colleen Reid - Assistant Professor of Geography who researches how the physical and social environments affect health. She has led many studies investigating the health impacts of wildfire smoke exposure (colleen.reid@colorado.edu).
Virginia Iglesias - Interim Director of Earth Lab and research scientist with expertise in extreme events, including fires, and natural hazard risk (virginia.iglesias@colorado.edu).
R. Chelsea Nagy - Deputy Director of the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab and research scientist with expertise in interactions between fires and invasive plant species (chelsea.nagy@colorado.edu).
Jane Wolken - University Deputy Director, North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, with expertise in boreal forest ecology (jane.wolken@colorado.edu).
Lise St. Denis - Research scientist in Earth Lab with expertise in emergency response and mining social media/crisis informatics (Lise.St.Denis@Colorado.edu).
Joost de Gouw - CIRES Fellow and professor of chemistry who researches how wildfire smoke impacts air quality. (joost.degouw@colorado.edu).
Michael Koontz - Research affiliate at Earth Lab with expertise in forest ecology, and how climate change changes forest dynamics through its impact on disturbance agents like wildfire and bark beetles (michael.koontz@colorado.edu).
Nayani Ilangakoon - Research Scientist in Earth Lab with expertise in remote sensing and currently focused post-fire vegetation dynamics in western US ecosystems integrating state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques (ginikanda.ilangakoon@colorado.edu).