Forest fire risk is expected to increase as fire weather and drought conditions intensify. To improve quantification of the intensity and extent of forest fire damage, we have developed a global forest burn severity (GFBS) database that provides burn severity spectral indices (dNBR and RdNBR) at a 30 m spatial resolution. This database could be more reliable than prior sources of information for future studies of forest burn severity on the global scale in a computationally cost-effective way.