Another interesting Google Earth network link from those guys in Russia (see credits below). This time they have collected data from NASA and other sources to share with you interesting environmental data showing the status of global-wide fires which rage in various parts of the world throughout the year. The data was collected by NASA’s MODIS environmental satellites Terra and Aqua and superimposed on the NASA Blue Marble satellite images of the earth (more credits below). Each sample of data is for a 10-day period, and the Google Earth file can show you any 10-day period since the middle of year 2000 to the present.
So, our friend Valery35 from the Google Earth Community posted this new network link for Global Fires. Operating this network link is a little tricky, so follow these instructions:
- Download the Global Fire network link
- Turn on “Global Fire Maps” in the “Temporary Places” folder. This will load the first “level” of folders
- Look for a folder labeled “600*300” (which is the resolution of the data I believe) – open the folder by clicking on the little triangle -> DO NOT turn on the folder though as you will load all the data at once
- You will see folders for each year since 2000. Click on a year to load it, then open the folder (again, DO NOT turn it on)
- You should see a reverse chronological list of images for ten day periods of the format ‘year”daynumber’. So, for example 2005001-2005010 is the first ten days of the year. You can turn and off these different images to see the fire data.
By the way, this is another case where a time-lapse animation of placemarks would be VERY valuable in Google Earth if it were available. But, you could make a movie of the various files, which is what Valery35 has done. He published a Global Fire Movie you can watch in Windows Media Player which shows the fires over time in Google Earth. Very cool!
The fire maps were created by…
