Whilst gorse and forest fires rage across the country, causing particular destruction in Galway, its might be interesting to see these events in a global context.
NASA runs a “real time” forest fire detection service, using thermal anomaly mapping from MODIS and VIIRS satellites. A screen grab from today show the global distribution of fires in the last 24hrs (red dots):
You can access the FIRMS service here
Earth Observation & Remote Sensing Research in Ireland 