Possible causes
- Wildfire or vegetation fire.
- Prescribed or agricultural burning.
- Industrial heat or gas flaring.
- Volcanic activity.
- Other anomalies or processing artefacts.
Confirmation requires other evidence
Official incident reports, local observations, weather, land context, and subsequent satellite passes can add context. ThermalGlobe V1 does not invent a fire type or convert a hotspot into an official incident.
No hotspot is not no fire
Coverage gaps and obscuration work in the opposite direction too: a real fire may be missing. Always use competent official sources for decisions involving safety.
Add context without inventing a cause
Check the observation time, sensor, repeated passes and surrounding land context, but keep the displayed label as a thermal detection until an authoritative source identifies an incident. The nearest town is only a geographic reference and must not become an invented fire name.
Industrial facilities and recurring agricultural activity can produce repeated heat signals. Conversely, a wildfire under cloud or dense canopy may produce no visible point. ThermalGlobe deliberately avoids automatic wildfire classification because the satellite row alone cannot support it.