Weather Model Predicts Strong Storms Helps Fight California Forest Fires

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The California wildfires have been absolutely remarkable and equally destructive. Cal Fire reported on November 9 that the camp fire had exceeded 90,000 hectares but had been controlled only to 5%. At the time of writing this article, nine people have died in the northern California fire. Tragically, according to officials, some bodies were found inside their cars. For the first time in ten years, Sacramento County has imposed restrictions on burning from fireplaces and wood stoves due to a forest fire. Unhealthy air is a major problem in the areas affected by fire. Further down the California coast, the Woolsey Fire, powered by Santa Ana Winds (see article by my colleague Trevor Name) and in dry weather, caused over 250,000 evacuations while it was spreading on the coast. Firefighters and brave civil servants risk their lives fighting fires, but so does an interesting mix of satellite weather data and the popular HRRR weather forecast model.

The Landsat program is a beast of burden for the US fleet of satellites. The above image is extracted from the Landsat 8 operational terrain imager (OLI). Using a combination of infrared (heat) and visible sensors, active fires and associated smoke plumes cause a particularly bad air quality in Northern California is clearly visible. Landsat-8 is developed by NASA for the US Geological Survey (USGS) and allows images to be taken from the entire Earth every 16 days.

The image below was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) of NASA's Terra satellite. According to NASA, this image was captured on November 9, 2018. The website of NASA's Earth Observatory points out that,

Violent winds fired (Camp) to the south and southwest during the night, tripling its size and spreading smoke over the Sacramento Valley … The high-resolution fast cooling model of Smokes, using data from the NOAA and NASA satellites, show that smoke should continue to spread to the west. The image also shows two other fires in Southern California, Hill and Woolsey fires.

Although the images themselves are breathtaking and useful for locating fires, I hope you have noticed the mention of the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) smoke model. This model is a new experimental effort developed by the NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory (ESRL) and the Cooperative Institute for Environmental Science Research. It builds on the capabilities of the HRRR weather model, which many members of the meteorological community rely on for short-term forecasting information. According to a discussion on NASA's Earth Observatory page,

The Rapid Refresh Smoke High-Resolution Model, or HRRR-Smoke, builds on NOAA's existing HRRR weather model, which predicts rain, wind and thunderstorms. It ingests real-time data from the Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 satellites in polar orbit, as well as NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites …HRRR-Smoke is an important measure called radiative firepower. PRF is a measure of the amount of heat generated by a given megawatt fire. A large fire, for example, can reach about 4,000 megawatts per pixel (750 x 750 meters). The calculation of radiative power and its distribution can help scientists locate the active front of a fire and predict the density and trajectory of the smoke it emits.

The HRRR-Smoke Forecasts include "Near-Surface Smoke" (less than 26 feet from the ground) and "Vertically Integrated Smoke". It is "near-surface smoke" that disturbs our eyes and aggravates upper respiratory problems such as asthma. The smoke in the vertical column is a danger to the world of aviation and for other activities vulnerable to smoke in the Earth 's atmosphere.

One of the drawbacks of the HRRR-Smoke model lies in the fact that it relies on data from polar-orbiting satellites that take snapshots twice a day. The advantage of satellite data in polar orbit lies in the high spatial resolution. However, forest fires can evolve rapidly. Ravan Ahmadov developed the HRRR-Smoke model at the NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory. He told NASA that he hoped to integrate geosynchronous satellite data for near-constant visualization of rapidly changing fires in the future. The spatial resolution will suffer, however, because such satellites are 32 000 km above the Earth.

Forecasts for Saturday, November 10 are provided below. The link for HRRR-Smoke experimental products is here.

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The California wildfires have been absolutely remarkable and equally destructive. Cal Fire reported on November 9 that the camp fire had exceeded 90,000 hectares but had been controlled only to 5%. At the time of writing this article, nine people have died in the northern California fire. Tragically, according to officials, some bodies were found inside their cars. For the first time in ten years, Sacramento County has imposed restrictions on burning from fireplaces and wood stoves due to a forest fire. Unhealthy air is a major problem in the areas affected by fire. Further down the California coast, the Woolsey Fire, powered by Santa Ana Winds (see article by my colleague Trevor Name) and in dry weather, caused over 250,000 evacuations while it was spreading on the coast. Firefighters and brave civil servants risk their lives fighting fires, but so does an interesting mix of satellite weather data and the popular HRRR weather forecast model.

The Landsat program is a beast of burden for the US fleet of satellites. The above image is extracted from the Landsat 8 operational terrain imager (OLI). Using a combination of infrared (heat) and visible sensors, active fires and associated smoke plumes cause a particularly bad air quality in Northern California is clearly visible. Landsat-8 is developed by NASA for the US Geological Survey (USGS) and allows images to be taken from the entire Earth every 16 days.

The image below was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) of NASA's Terra satellite. According to NASA, this image was captured on November 9, 2018. The website of NASA's Earth Observatory points out that,

Violent winds fired (Camp) to the south and southwest during the night, tripling its size and spreading smoke over the Sacramento Valley … The high-resolution fast cooling model of Smokes, using data from the NOAA and NASA satellites, show that smoke should continue to spread to the west. The image also shows two other fires in Southern California, Hill and Woolsey fires.

Although the images themselves are breathtaking and useful for locating fires, I hope you have noticed the mention of the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) smoke model. This model is a new experimental effort developed by the NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory (ESRL) and the Cooperative Institute for Environmental Science Research. It builds on the capabilities of the HRRR weather model, which many members of the meteorological community rely on for short-term forecasting information. According to a discussion on NASA's Earth Observatory page,

The Rapid Refresh Smoke High-Resolution Model, or HRRR-Smoke, builds on NOAA's existing HRRR weather model, which predicts rain, wind and thunderstorms. It ingests real-time data from the Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 satellites in polar orbit, as well as NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites …HRRR-Smoke is an important measure called radiative firepower. PRF is a measure of the amount of heat generated by a given megawatt fire. A large fire, for example, can reach about 4,000 megawatts per pixel (750 x 750 meters). The calculation of radiative power and its distribution can help scientists locate the active front of a fire and predict the density and trajectory of the smoke it emits.

The HRRR-Smoke Forecasts include "Near-Surface Smoke" (less than 26 feet from the ground) and "Vertically Integrated Smoke". It is "near-surface smoke" that disturbs our eyes and aggravates upper respiratory problems such as asthma. The smoke in the vertical column is a danger to the world of aviation and for other activities vulnerable to smoke in the Earth 's atmosphere.

One of the drawbacks of the HRRR-Smoke model lies in the fact that it relies on data from polar-orbiting satellites that take snapshots twice a day. The advantage of satellite data in polar orbit lies in the high spatial resolution. However, forest fires can evolve rapidly. Ravan Ahmadov developed the HRRR-Smoke model at the NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory. He told NASA that he hoped to integrate geosynchronous satellite data for near-constant visualization of rapidly changing fires in the future. The spatial resolution will suffer, however, because such satellites are 32 000 km above the Earth.

Forecasts for Saturday, November 10 are provided below. The link for HRRR-Smoke experimental products is here.