Weather Model For Predicting Severe Storms Is Helping Fight California Wildfires
The wildfires in California have been utterly remarkable and equally destructive. Cal Fire reported on November 9th that the Camp Fire had surpassed 90,000 acres but was only 5 percent contained. At the time of writing, nine people were confirmed dead in the Northern California fire. Tragically, some of the bodies were found inside their cars, according to officials. For the first time in a decade, Sacramento County put restrictions on burning from fireplaces and wood stoves because of a wildfire. Unhealthy air is a significant problem in fire-impacted regions. Further down the California coast, the Woolsey Fire, powered by Santa Ana Winds (see article by my colleague Trevor Name) and dry conditions, has forced over 250,000 evacuations as it spreads to the coast. Courageous firefighters and officials are risking their lives to battle the blazes, but so is an interesting blend of weather satellite data and the popular HRRR weather forecast model.
A long time workhorse of the U.S. satellite fleet is the Landsat Program. The image above is from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite. Using a combination of infrared (heat) and visible sensors, the active fires and the associated smoke plumes causing particularly bad air quality in Northern California are clearly seen. The Landsat-8 is developed by NASA for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and images the entire Earth every 16 days.
HRRR-Smoke forecasts include “Near-surface smoke” (within 26 feet of the ground) and “Vertically integrated smoke.” It is the "Near-surface smoke" that bothers our eyes and aggravates upper respiratory issues like asthma. Smoke in the vertical column is a hazard to the aviation community and other activities vulnerable to smoke in the Earth's atmosphere.
One limitation of the HRRR-Smoke model is that it relies on data from polar orbiting satellites that take snapshots twice per day. The advantage of polar orbiting satellite data is the high-spatial resolution. However, wildfires can rapidly evolve. Ravan Ahmadov, developed the HRRR-Smoke model at NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory. He told NASA he hopes to incorporate geosynchronous satellite data in the future for near-constant viewing of rapidly evolving fires. Spatial resolution will suffer, however, because such satellites are 22,000 miles above the Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment