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Researchers at NASA created a model that badyzes various climatic factors that lead to the formation and spread of fires on a global scale.
The GFWED ()] Global Fire Weather Database ) takes into account local winds, temperatures, and humidity, while being the first model of fire prediction to include satellite precipitation
. Fires are important because smoke can affect the quality of the air and increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, NASA points out.
The animation above shows the risk of fire calculated by GFWED . The model compiles and badyzes multiple sets of data and produces an badessment that indicates the likelihood and intensity of the fire in a given area. This is the same type of rating that many firefighting organizations use in their daily operations.
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Historical data are available to understand the weather conditions in which fires have occurred in the past, and there is almost real-time data to measure the current danger "Instead of looking at the individual climate components, we observed their full effect," said Robert Field, GFWED creator and climatologist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies . "This is not just a factor that triggers or spreads a fire." For example, if a region has not received normal rainfall for weeks or months, the vegetation may be drier and more prone to catch fire. Then, if it's windy, a fire could spread faster.
GFWED combines weather data from various sources. Temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed are from the MERRA2 dataset of NASA's Office of Global Modeling and Assimilation (CMMS). Rainfall data are from ground-level rain gauges and Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals (IMERG), products of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. Using GMAO's weather forecast, GFWED also includes a global 8-day fire hazard forecast.
"In much of the world, tracking fires and smoke using NASA's satellite data is the only way to get a consistent picture of fire activity, and our Fire time data helps us understand the causes, "said Field. "This will help us understand how the fire activity might change and allow us to think about the future for different climate scenarios."
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The model has been particularly useful in Indonesia, which tends to have an intense fire season during the El Niño years. Field works with the Agency of Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics of Indonesia and the Ministry of Environment and Forests to improve the fire hazard maps of this country.
Meteorological stations with rain gauges in fire-prone regions in Indonesia may be rare, so satellite data help fill the gaps in the region. Therefore, the model can provide a more accurate picture of the possible fire hazard.
Field intends to add more elements in the next version of GFWED including the observation of how much time in advance predict a high risk of fire. It also plans to include vegetation types in the soil because fires can start or spread differently depending on the fuel. Topography is another potential addition, as fires tend to spread more quickly uphill.
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