The evolution of self-heating areas on five chosen coal-waste dumps in Upper Silesia (Poland) was quantitatively investigated with the aim of finding a cheap and fast method of detecting and localising coal-waste fires on the dumps. The results show that Landsat 4-5 TM and ETM+ images from snow-covered terrain enable the burning areas of the dumps to be seen and that, in addition, they can be used to observe the evolution of these thermal anomalies. Furthermore, the analysis showed that the external temperature had an impact on surfaces of self-heating areas; when the air-temperature was low, the surface temperatures of these hot areas were lowered. In the study, it managed to observe the evolution of self-heating areas, i.e., the appearance of hot spots, their migration and their disappearance were observed. The method used is relatively rapid, low-cost and field temperature measurements are not essential. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.