Europe's free satellite tool now makes wildfire tracking easier
The European Space Agency's free Copernicus Browser platform has added a built-in tool for visualizing wildfires and smoke from space. The update arrives as severe wildfires continue to burn across several regions of the world.
Copernicus Browser, the free satellite imagery platform run by the European Space Agency (ESA), has integrated a visualization script for tracking wildfires and smoke as a default option. Previously, users had to manually add this script by copying it into the custom visualization option under the platform's default layers.
The push to integrate the tool came from Simon Proud, mission scientist for Sentinel-2 at ESA. He announced that the integration had finally happened in a Discord channel run by the investigative journalism group Bellingcat.
How it compares to other tools
Other satellite systems also exist for detecting and monitoring wildfires and smoke. NASA's FIRMS tool, for instance, offers a free global map of fires detected by NASA satellite sensors, updated within just a few hours. However, that imagery is only available at coarser resolutions, down to 250 meters.
Sentinel-2 imagery, by contrast, updates less frequently—every few days—but offers much higher resolution, reaching down to 10 meters in certain spectral bands. That combination arguably makes Copernicus Browser one of the best free, publicly available tools for high-resolution satellite imagery, useful not only for wildfires but also for monitoring conflict zones.
Wildfires continue in several regions
The upgrade comes as climate change continues to intensify wildfire seasons worldwide, leaving no shortage of fires to monitor. Much of Washington and Oregon are dealing with wildfires and smoke, Canada is on track for one of its worst wildfire seasons on record, and firefighters in France and Spain are still battling blazes, with hundreds of thousands evacuated in Spain amid a record-breaking wildfire season.
