Active Wildfires
Real-time satellite-confirmed wildfire events from NASA EONET, visualised as glowing fire sprites on a WebGL globe. Filter by geographic region and click any fire for event details and source agency links.
NASA
EONET data source
15 min
Refresh interval
7
Geographic regions
Free
No API key required
Data Pipeline
NASA EONET v3 API
NASA's Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET) aggregates natural hazard events from authoritative sources including InciWeb, USGS, NOAA, and ESA. The GeoJSON endpoint for wildfires returns active, open events with geographic coordinates and source links — no API key required.
Next.js API Proxy
A server-side Route Handler proxies the EONET request with 15-minute caching — wildfires are updated by NASA as events are confirmed and resolved, so 15-minute refresh is appropriate to capture new detections without overloading the upstream API.
GeoJSON Parsing & Classification
Each GeoJSON feature's geometry is parsed (Point or Polygon centroid). Geographic region is derived from lat/lng bounding-box rules covering North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Each fire gets a region-specific colour.
WebGL Fire-Sprite Rendering
Each fire is rendered as a large (10px) canvas-drawn fire-glow sprite in a Three.js BufferGeometry particle system. A pulsing opacity animation gives the impression of flickering flames. Fire sprites are deliberately large to ensure visibility on the globe.
About NASA EONET
The Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET) is maintained by NASA's Earth Observatory team. It aggregates natural hazard event data from partner agencies including InciWeb (wildfire incident reporting), USGS, NOAA, and ESA Copernicus Emergency Management Service.
Events are confirmed by human analysts before being added to the EONET catalogue, which means the dataset reflects significant, satellite-detectable fires rather than every small fire. Active events remain in the feed until officially closed by the reporting agency.
Tech Stack
Data source
NASA EONET v3 (open events)
Update rate
15 min cache refresh
Coverage
Global active wildfire events
Globe
globe.gl + Three.js WebGL
Earth texture
NASA Blue Marble Day
Click
Fire name, region, date, source link