Where will the smoke go?
Where will the smoke go?
At the moment when the United States Forest Service declared Mendocino Fire Complex 100 percent contained by mid-September 2018, had burned for almost two months, destroyed 157 homes and burned more than 459,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in California's history. Forest fires in the burned state More than 1.3 million acres. from January 1 to November 4, involving the region and, sometimes, whole swaths of the country, in smoke.
In the past, the behavior of such forest fires and their plumes of smoke was very difficult to predict. "It was a challenge for atmospheric models to know where a fire was, how active it was and how many emissions it was generating in the atmosphere," said Andy Edman, who oversees the western region's forest fires for the National Weather Service. "It was like having a family reunion. Most people will act normally, but the behavior of forest fires can be like your crazy uncle's: erratic and difficult to predict. "
But a new experimental model based on satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA has proved very good at simulating the behavior of wildfire smoke. The High Resolution Rapid Refresh Smoke model, or HRRR-Smoke, is based on the existing NOAA HRRR weather model, which forecasts rain, wind and thunderstorms. It invests real-time data from the Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 polar orbiting satellites of the Joint Polar System, as well as NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.
The image in the upper left, captured by the Radiometer visible for infrared images (VIIRS) in Suomi-NPP, shows the western United States in natural color on the afternoon of August 6, 2018, at the height of the Mendocino Fire Complex. In the upper right part there is a simulation HRRR-Smoke of the same region at the same time.
Central to HRRR-Smoke is an important metric called fire radiation power. FRP is a measure of the amount of heat released by a given fire in megawatts. A large fire, for example, could reach about 4,000 megawatts per pixel (750x750 meters). Calculating the radiative power and where it is distributed can help scientists identify the active front of a fire and predict the density and trajectory of the smoke it will emit.
The HRRR-smoke model combines FRP data with observations of wind speed, rainfall and atmospheric temperature. It also includes vegetation maps because the more scientists know about what is being burned, the better the simulation will be. (For example, mugwort burns differently than ponderosa pine). These measurements are assigned to a three-dimensional grid that extends almost 16 miles into the atmosphere. What results is a detailed forecast of the amount of smoke produced, the direction in which you must travel and the height of the boom. HRRR-Smoke generates forecasts four times a day and anticipates 36 hours.
The forecasts include two sets of key predictions. "Smoke near the surface" refers to smoke that will float 8 meters (26 feet) from the ground, the type responsible for burnt eyes and aggravated asthma. The "vertically integrated smoke" represents all smoke in a vertical column, including smoke in the Earth's atmosphere. That is the smoke that you see at sunrise and sunset. The following animation shows a 36-hour smoke forecast vertically integrated on August 6, 2018.
"The smoke near the surface is an indicator of air pollution, but the smoke could also be at much higher altitudes," said Ravan Ahmadov, the lead developer of the HRRR-smoke model, and a research scientist at the Research Laboratory. of Earth Systems of NOAA and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "It is important to know, because the smoke could affect the visibility of aviation." High-altitude smoke can also block incoming sunlight, which can cool air temperatures and interfere with the production of solar energy.
HRRR-Smoke is being increasingly used by forecasters and government agencies, but also by some local groups. During the Fire ferguson, the Department of Transportation used HRRR-Smoke simulations as part of its decision to suspend the Amtrak rail service in the region. Also, the model was part of the calculation of the National Park Service when it closed parts of Yosemite.
At the local level, schools in Utah referred to model predictions when they opted to keep children indoors during recess and cancel football games due to fires burning south of Provo. In Oregon, a youth swim coach moved the practice outdoors to an indoor pool after hearing the forecast.
"When we can tell people that the smoke is going to move and stay for a day, they can take smart actions to anticipate the event," Edman said. "If you have a child with asthma, you know you should take precautions."
The HRRR-Smoke model continues to evolve. One limitation, said Ahmadov, is that each polar-orbiting satellite passes each location in the continental United States only twice a day, and fires can spread and evolve rapidly during the time between those observations. It hopes eventually to incorporate data from geostationary satellites such as GOES-16 and GOES-17, which have a lower spatial resolution but would scan fires more frequently. The final goal is to add smoke to the regular model of HRRR used by the National Meteorological Service.
"In the next two years, I think we'll see many small and incremental improvements," Edman said. "The model is not perfect, but all the components came together this year, and the forecasts were pretty good."
Images from the NASA Earth Observatory by Lauren Dauphin, using data from VIIRS Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Y HRRR-Smoke data. History of Jenny Marder, Joint Polar Satellite System.
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