FRYv2.0 : a global fire patch morphology database from FireCCI51 and MCD64A1

The assessment of global burned area from remote sensing is an essential climate variable driving land surface GHG emissions and energy/water budget. Gridded 0.25° or 0.5° monthly burned area have been largely used for biosphere/atmosphere interactions modelling, while recent fire/weather analysis or model developments increasingly request fire events, defined as a fire patch with intrinsic fire spread properties. Pixel level information, the finest resolution from global burned area, defined by their burn date, can be aggregated within a spatio-temporal threshold and delineate these fire events. Uncertainties in burn date, the coarse resolution of pixel resolution, multiple ignition points, or the specified values in spatio-temporal thresholds can however lead to various final fire event delineation. Currently, three major global fire event database exist (FRY, Fire Atlas, GlobFire), mostly derived from MCD64A1 pixel level 500m-resolution burned area. We propose here a new version of FRY, based on MCD64A1 and FireCCI51 at 250m, with an updated pixel aggregation method allowing for single ignition fire patches. Fire patch morphology indicators as elongation, direction, complexity have been conserved from v1.0, with additional information as ignition points from minimum burn date from burned area and more timely-accurate hotspots (VIIRS and MCD14ML), rate of spread, fire Radiative power and burn severity, as well as fraction of land cover affected, based on user requirements. The dataset is delivered as a yearly shapefile, with an attribute table referencing all information on ignition, spread and final shape. Global comparison of major information from FRYv2.0 (fire size distribution, fire number, ROS) will illustrate the effects of increasing spatial resolution and better timing from hotspots provided in this new version, freely available for the scientific community for the period 2001-2020.