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Fire regimes are changing rapidly around the world, but the exact mechanisms through which humans and climate affect global fire regimes remain poorly understood. Global burned area data from NASA's MODIS sensors capture nearly two decades of global fire activity, required for time series analysis. These data provide daily estimates of fire affected area, that can be used to understand the dynamics of individual large fires (≥ 25 ha). Here, we present a new global dataset, the Global Fire Atlas, including six data layers that characterize global fire regimes: ignitions, fire size, duration, speed, fire line extent, and direction of fire spread. The Global Fire Atlas is based on Collection 6 MODIS 500-m daily burned area data (MCD64A1). By separating individual large fires, we first divide burned area (BA) into the number of fire ignitions (I) and their corresponding fire sizes (S)(BA= I x S). Fire size can be further …