The MODIS daily 1 km level 3 hotspot/fire products over East Asia and Asian Russia used in this study were from the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), which was developed by the University of Maryland with funds from NASA (http://maps.geog.umd. edu). FIRMS integrates remote sensing and GIS technologies to deliver near real‐time global MODIS hotspot/fire information to international users and support fire managers around the world by the MODIS Rapid Response System [Davies et al., 2009].