Europe's free satellite service just made it easier to track wildfires

Copernicus Browser adds wildfire visualization amid record wildfire season.

The short version

• The wildfires afflicting communities across the world can now be tracked more easily by anyone using Europe’s free and open satellite imagery service—all thanks to a wildfire visualization script originating from nearly a decade ago.
• Now Copernicus Browser has also added a straightforward “wildfires” visualization layer for Sentinel-2 imagery that went live on August 4.
• Anyone clicking on this layer while looking at a wildfire location can see active fires in white or yellow, burning vegetation in red, and burned landscapes in dark brown or black.

What happened

That helpful wildfire visualization enhancement comes from a script written in JavaScript by remote sensing expert Pierre Markuse . Users could previously add this script manually to Copernicus Browser sessions by copying and pasting it using the custom visualization option under the default layers.

Why it matters

But Simon Proud , mission scientist for Sentinel-2 at the European Space Agency, pushed to get the script integrated into Copernicus Browser as a default option.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.