An Hourly Wildfire Potential Index for Predicting Subdaily Fire Activity Based on Rapidly Updating Convection-Allowing Model Forecasts

James, Eric; Ahmadov, Ravan; Romero-Alvarez, Johana; Grell, Georg; Csiszar, Ivan; Anderson, Lindsey D.; Schnell, Jordan; de Gouw, Joost

doi:10.1175/WAF-D-24-0068.1

i

An Hourly Wildfire Potential Index for Predicting Subdaily Fire Activity Based on Rapidly Updating Convection-Allowing Model Forecasts

2025
By James, Eric ; Ahmadov, Ravan ; Romero-Alvarez, Johana ; ...

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Journal Title:

Weather and Forecasting
Personal Author:

James, Eric ; Ahmadov, Ravan ; Romero-Alvarez, Johana ; Grell, Georg ; Csiszar, Ivan ; Anderson, Lindsey D. ; Schnell, Jordan ; de Gouw, Joost
NOAA Program & Office:

NESDIS (National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service) ; OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) ; GSL (Global Systems Laboratory) ; STAR (Center for Satellite Applications and Research)
Description:

Many fire weather index products have been developed to assist land managers, weather forecasters, and firefighters with anticipating weather conditions that may impact existing or potential new wildland fires in coming days. Most of these indices are designed to provide a single value for an entire 24-h period. Extreme wildfire activity in the western United States in recent years, including the impact of mesoscale and microscale phenomena such as thunderstorm gust frontal passages, radiative shading by dense smoke plumes, and pyrocumulonimbus development and collapse, as well as the advent of operational convection-allowing model forecasts, has highlighted the need for a more frequently updated index. In this study, we present a proof of concept for an hourly fire weather index developed specifically for application within a rapidly updating convection-allowing model. The index, termed the hourly wildfire potential (HWP), is developed based on observations of fire radiative power (FRP) from polar-orbiting satellites during large western U.S. wildfires in 2018 and 2020 and is evaluated against a merged dataset of FRP from polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites. The index is computed based on meteorological output from the NOAA operational High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model. The HWP index exhibits an improved representation of hourly FRP compared to a climatological approach and also shows promise for distinguishing between conditions associated with flaming and smoldering combustion. This work paves the way for improved prediction of wildfire smoke emissions in the coming hours and days.
Source:

Weather and Forecasting, 40(9), 1805-1822
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-24-0068.1
ISSN:

0882-8156 ; 1520-0434
Format:

pdf
Publisher:

American Meteorological Society
Document Type:

Journal Article
Funding:

Grant no. NA22OAR4320151 ; Grant no. NA22OAR4320151 ; Grant no. NA22OAR4320151
Rights Information:

Other
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:6ca2ba1929df7e4c16f7850e3117f91f6ec8c5fa216da84d2f81ad4d2539a6bd55fa464d9695cc14d3ddac10ede20c181f691022c8c505b603c60e15cf0b206b
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/71371/noaa_71371_DS1.pdf
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[PDF - 22.07 MB ]

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