How it works

Five satellites have watched Myanmar's fires, each with a different eye. Mee turns them into one record you can compare year to year.

1. 1

   Collect every fire detection

   Mee downloads all active-fire detections over Myanmar from NASA FIRMS: MODIS on Terra and Aqua since 2000, and VIIRS on Suomi NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 since 2012.

2. 2

   Keep only real vegetation fires

   Detections flagged as gas flares, volcanoes or other static heat are removed. Low-confidence detections are dropped. Repeats are counted once.

3. 3

   Put every satellite on one scale

   VIIRS sees far more small fires than MODIS. On days when both fly, Mee measures the gap for each state and month, then scales every satellite to match NOAA-20.

4. 4

   Build the calendar

   The scaled counts are added up per township, per day. When several VIIRS satellites cover a day, Mee uses their average. Before 2012, scaled MODIS fills in.

5. 5

   Define normal

   For each date, Mee looks at the 7-day total on the same dates in every past year. The middle value is normal. Above the 75th percentile is above normal. Above the 90th is far above normal.