Active wildfire hotspots
A free map of active wildfire hotspots detected by NASA satellites over the past day. Each point is a thermal detection, coloured by its fire radiative power, so the most intense fires glow brightest and burning regions light up across the map. Tap any hotspot for its fire power, brightness temperature and the time it was seen. Data comes from NASA FIRMS and refreshes through the day.
How to use the wildfire map
Each glowing point is a satellite heat detection from the past day. Brighter, hotter colours are more intense fires; clusters show active fire regions.
Click any point for its fire radiative power, brightness temperature, the time it was observed and whether it was a day or night pass.
Tap “Strongest” to fly to the most intense fire on the map right now, or read the total number of hotspots.
Press “Near me” to centre the map on your location and see fire activity around you.
See where the world is burning right now
Source: NASA FIRMS (MODIS, near real-time). Satellite heat detections from the last ~24 h, refreshed a few times a day — not live and not an emergency source. Map © OpenStreetMap & CARTO.
Where the dots come from — and what they are not
The map plots satellite thermal detections, not confirmed fires. Knowing how the data is made is what keeps a red dot from being read as an evacuation order.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Source | NASA FIRMS, MODIS instruments on the Terra and Aqua satellites |
| What a dot is | A thermal anomaly detected in the last ~24 hours, with its radiative power |
| Freshness | Satellites pass a few times a day; our copy is re-read every 30 minutes |
| Filtering | Low-confidence detections are dropped before the map is drawn |
What the map cannot tell you
- Whether a dot is a wildfire at all. Gas flares, industrial furnaces and volcanoes are hot too, and the instrument does not distinguish them.
- The shape or size of a fire. Each dot is one detection cell of about a kilometre, not a burnt area outline.
- Anything in real time. A pass can be hours old, so this is not a source for emergency decisions — follow your local services.
- What is under clouds or heavy smoke. Thermal sensing does not see through them, and a quiet area may simply be an unobserved one.
