Four Years of Fire. 249,172 thermal anomalies detected by the VIIRS instrument on NASA's Suomi NPP satellite over Ukraine, 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2025. Each mark is one detection; the country's shape is drawn by the detections themselves. The densest band of heat sits across the east and south, where the war is fought, and in spring and late summer detections spread across farmland. The record Detections from 1 January to 23 February 2022 precede the full-scale invasion; the February month view spans that boundary. Use left and right arrow keys to step month by month. Click or tap an ember to read its exact detection record.
Four calendar years of heat over Ukraine, one mark per satellite detection. The country's outline is drawn by the detections themselves; there is no map underneath.
No borders, no axes, no legend. Every mark is one thermal anomaly detected from orbit. The densest band of heat runs across the east and south, where the war is fought. Step month by month with ← → and the rhythm of the year shows: in spring and again in late summer, detections spread across farmland; in midwinter the band in the east remains.
The record begins on 1 January 2022. Detections from 1 January to 23 February 2022 precede the full-scale invasion; the February month view spans that boundary. These winter weeks show the country's fire level just before the invasion, not a year-round baseline.
The data itself records heat, not cause. Independent analyses using this same class of satellite record do attribute the pattern: a peer-reviewed study of Ukrainian fire activity from 2001 to 2024 (Fire Ecology, Springer) finds that armed conflict has intensified fire activity near the front lines, with spring and late-summer peaks driven partly by agricultural residue burning, and The Economist's war-fire model uses these thermal anomalies to detect war events. The seasonal spread and the eastern band you see match those findings.
One mark = one VIIRS S-NPP 375 m thermal-anomaly detection in NASA FIRMS’ Ukraine country files. Position = the detection’s coordinates. Radius ∝ √(fire radiative power in MW), capped. Marks are drawn additively, so places hit again and again glow brighter. Nothing else is encoded. All detections are shown: every confidence class, day and night, vegetation fires, static industrial sources and offshore platforms.
249,172 detections. Selecting an ember shows its exact record: date, UTC time, coordinates, fire radiative power, confidence class, day/night flag and detection type.
NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System), VIIRS S-NPP 375 m standard-product
country archive for Ukraine, years 2022–2025. Publisher: NASA LANCE FIRMS / University of
Maryland.
Source: firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/data/country/viirs-snpp · Use: NASA Earth science data are
free and open, with citation · 249,172 records.
Context: “War, climate change, and land use shape wildfire dynamics in Ukraine,
2001–2024”, Fire Ecology (Springer), link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42408-026-00527-y
· The Economist’s Ukraine war-fire model,
github.com/TheEconomist/the-economist-war-fire-model.
FIRMS sees heat, not intent: a detection can be shelling, a wildfire, stubble burning, a factory or a gas flare, and does not by itself confirm a military event. Cloud cover hides fires. A 375 m pixel is not a point: coordinates locate the pixel, not the source. The 2026 standard archive was not yet published when this piece was built.
← → step months · Home all four years · Esc close · click or tap an ember to read it.