Emissions - Biomass Fires MODIS LC

Annual greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2eq) from biomass fires. Biomass fire emissions are obtained using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 1 methods on fire emissions (IPCC, 2006, Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories). Global emissions from biomass fires are computed for each pixel by multiplying the area burnt by the consumption value of the fuel biomass available in the pixel. The applied consumption value is a function of the climate zone and vegetation type prevailing in the pixel. Emissions are finally computed multiplying the biomass burnt in each pixel by the emission factors of each greenhouse gas (CO2, CH4 and N2O). The area burnt is obtained from the MODIS burned area monthly dataset (MCD64A1 v6) which contains observations of burnt areas at about 500 m resolution. The vegetation type is derived from the MODIS land cover v6 (MCD12Q1 v6) dataset which contains annual land cover data using the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme classification (IGBP; Loveland and Belward, 1997). Two climatic layers, the FAO Global Ecological Zones (GEZ; FAO, 2012) and the IPCC climate zones, developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (2010) were used to subdivide the land cover classes into classes that match those described in the IPCC Guidelines. The final global dataset shown here is the sum of the N2O, CH4 (converted to CO2 equivalent using the global warming potential from the IPCC Assessment Report 5) and CO2 emission estimates for every year from 2001 until 2020. For simplification, emissions are visualised by the IPCC land use/land cover categories Cropland, Grassland and Forest although all details are available upon download. Units: kilotonnes. Pixel size: 500 x 500 meters