The remote sensing of aerosol over land remains a difficult task. Global distribution of polarizing aerosols (urban, industrial, smoke particles) are obtained, over land, from POLDER/ADEOS-1 visible and near-infrared measurements. In the paper, we study the correlation between POLDER aerosol index retrieved over land from polarimetric measurements and fire products derived from ATSR-2/ERS-2 3.7 &mgr;m channel. At global scale, fire patterns and aerosol index distributions agree well. A selection of 9 continental sites distributed in Africa, America and Asia have been studied. Monthly variations of aerosol index as well as fire occurrence are presented. A good correlation is observed, in traditional biomass burning regions, between aerosol index monthly average and fire count. These results clearly demonstrate POLDER capability to monitor biomass burning aerosol and also suggests polarizing aerosol presence in countries such as India or China. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union