Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray
The accurate prediction of wildfire behavior and spread is possible only when fire and atmosphere simulations are coupled. In this work, we present a mechanism that causes a small fire to intensify by altering the atmosphere. These alterations are caused by fire-related fluxes at the surface. The fi...
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ftmdpi:oai:mdpi.com:/2073-4433/11/7/763/ 2023-08-20T04:06:35+02:00 Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray Atoossa Bakhshaii Edward A. Johnson Kiana Nayebi agris 2020-07-18 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070763 EN eng Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Meteorology https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070763 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Atmosphere; Volume 11; Issue 7; Pages: 763 wildfire pyroconvection weather Skew-T Text 2020 ftmdpi https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070763 2023-07-31T23:47:40Z The accurate prediction of wildfire behavior and spread is possible only when fire and atmosphere simulations are coupled. In this work, we present a mechanism that causes a small fire to intensify by altering the atmosphere. These alterations are caused by fire-related fluxes at the surface. The fire plume and fluxes increase the convective available potential energy (CAPE) and the chance of the development of a strong pyroconvection system. To study this possible mechanism, we used WRF-Fire to capture fire line propagation as the result of interactions between heat and moisture fluxes, pressure perturbations, wind shear development and dry air downdraft. The wind patterns and dynamics of the pyroconvection system are simulated for the Horse River wildfire at Fort McMurray, Canada. The results revealed that the updraft speed reached up to 12 m/s. The entrainment mixed the mid and upper-level dry air and lowered the atmospheric moisture. The mid-level and upper-level dew point temperature changed by 5–10 ∘ C in a short period of time. The buoyant air strengthened the ascent as soon as the nocturnal inversion was eliminated by daytime heating. The 887 J/kg total increase of CAPE in less than 5 h and the high bulk Richardson number (BRN) of 93 were indicators of the growing pyro-cumulus cell. The presented simulation has not improved the original model or supported leading-edge numerical weather prediction (NWP) achievements, except for adapting WRF-Fire for Canadian biomass fuel. However, we were able to present a great deal of improvements in wildfire nowcasting and short-term forecasting to save lives and costs associated with wildfires. The simulation is sufficiently fast and efficient to be considered for a real-time operational model. While the project was designed and succeeded as an NWP application, we are still searching for a solution for the intractable problems associated with political borders and the current liable authorities for the further development of a new generation of national ... Text Fort McMurray MDPI Open Access Publishing Canada Fort McMurray Horse River ENVELOPE(-111.385,-111.385,56.717,56.717) Atmosphere 11 7 763 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
MDPI Open Access Publishing |
op_collection_id |
ftmdpi |
language |
English |
topic |
wildfire pyroconvection weather Skew-T |
spellingShingle |
wildfire pyroconvection weather Skew-T Atoossa Bakhshaii Edward A. Johnson Kiana Nayebi Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray |
topic_facet |
wildfire pyroconvection weather Skew-T |
description |
The accurate prediction of wildfire behavior and spread is possible only when fire and atmosphere simulations are coupled. In this work, we present a mechanism that causes a small fire to intensify by altering the atmosphere. These alterations are caused by fire-related fluxes at the surface. The fire plume and fluxes increase the convective available potential energy (CAPE) and the chance of the development of a strong pyroconvection system. To study this possible mechanism, we used WRF-Fire to capture fire line propagation as the result of interactions between heat and moisture fluxes, pressure perturbations, wind shear development and dry air downdraft. The wind patterns and dynamics of the pyroconvection system are simulated for the Horse River wildfire at Fort McMurray, Canada. The results revealed that the updraft speed reached up to 12 m/s. The entrainment mixed the mid and upper-level dry air and lowered the atmospheric moisture. The mid-level and upper-level dew point temperature changed by 5–10 ∘ C in a short period of time. The buoyant air strengthened the ascent as soon as the nocturnal inversion was eliminated by daytime heating. The 887 J/kg total increase of CAPE in less than 5 h and the high bulk Richardson number (BRN) of 93 were indicators of the growing pyro-cumulus cell. The presented simulation has not improved the original model or supported leading-edge numerical weather prediction (NWP) achievements, except for adapting WRF-Fire for Canadian biomass fuel. However, we were able to present a great deal of improvements in wildfire nowcasting and short-term forecasting to save lives and costs associated with wildfires. The simulation is sufficiently fast and efficient to be considered for a real-time operational model. While the project was designed and succeeded as an NWP application, we are still searching for a solution for the intractable problems associated with political borders and the current liable authorities for the further development of a new generation of national ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Atoossa Bakhshaii Edward A. Johnson Kiana Nayebi |
author_facet |
Atoossa Bakhshaii Edward A. Johnson Kiana Nayebi |
author_sort |
Atoossa Bakhshaii |
title |
Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray |
title_short |
Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray |
title_full |
Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray |
title_fullStr |
Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray |
title_full_unstemmed |
Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray |
title_sort |
wildfire pyroconvection and cape: buoyancy’s drying and atmospheric intensification—fort mcmurray |
publisher |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070763 |
op_coverage |
agris |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-111.385,-111.385,56.717,56.717) |
geographic |
Canada Fort McMurray Horse River |
geographic_facet |
Canada Fort McMurray Horse River |
genre |
Fort McMurray |
genre_facet |
Fort McMurray |
op_source |
Atmosphere; Volume 11; Issue 7; Pages: 763 |
op_relation |
Meteorology https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070763 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11070763 |
container_title |
Atmosphere |
container_volume |
11 |
container_issue |
7 |
container_start_page |
763 |
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1774717793207320576 |