Introduction

One of the useful aspects of having access to global data sets through R is the ability to quickly check on the empirical data underlying news stories. A story that is getting attention at the moment is the unusual numbers of wild fires within the Arctic circle.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49125391

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## Warning in rasterCheckSize(x, maxpixels = maxpixels): maximum number of pixels for Raster* viewing is 5e+05 ; 
## the supplied Raster* has 2.5e+07 
##  ... decreasing Raster* resolution to 5e+05 pixels
##  to view full resolution set 'maxpixels =  2.5e+07 '