NOAA Fire Weather

1 Outline

• Fire Weather Forecasting

• Fire Detection/Monitoring

• Fire Weather Research

2 Fire Weather Our Customers/Partners

Local

Regional

National

● USDA Forest Service ● Bureau of Land Management ● Bureau of Indian Affairs ● National Park Service ● Fish & Wildlife Service ● Local and State Fire Services Fire Weather Warning Services

Red Flag Warning

• NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center and local NWS Weather Forecast Offices issue products for fire management and the public

• Criteria focus on firefighter safety and extreme fire behavior

• Products also issued for lightning-ignited fires 4 Site-Specific Fire Weather Services

“Spot forecasts” support:

- Suppression - Prescribed fire - Marine Spills - HAZMAT - Search & Rescue

•Provided within 30 minutes of the request •20,000 issued annually •Vital to safety for all incident responders

5 Site-Specific Fire Weather Services

Incident Meteorologists (IMETs): - Support wildland fire - Assure Fire Team safety - Protect high value assets - Essential for tactical firefighting - The weather liaison to the public

•Protect millions of dollars of emergency equipment and cherished public lands •Defend the lives of thousands of responders •IMETs are on the front lines of On a single fire incident, the IMET protects the lives of Incident Response and nearly 1,000 Incident responders Public protection

6 Site-Specific IMET Missions and International Support

7 Outline

• Fire Weather Forecasting

• Fire Detection/Monitoring

• Fire Weather Research

8 NOAA Satellites for Monitoring Fires

JPSS Program – Polar orbiting GOES-R Series - Geostationary

NESDIS’ mission is to provide secure and timely access to global OUR environmental data and information from satellites and other MISSION sources to bothOUR promote and protect the Nation’s environment, security, economy,MISSION and quality of life.

Our vision is to expand the understanding of our dynamic planet OUR as the trusted source of environmental data. VISION

JPSS provides high spatial resolution ~ 375 m GOES-East and West provides nearly continuous used for identifying fire perimeters and for input observations of fires at a 2-3 km resolution to smoke forecast models (function of latitude ~ 6 km in central Alaska) 9 NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP VIIRS Detections of (CA) November 8-15, 2018

750m (M-band) 375m (I-band)

Later in the day, and for subsequent days, JPSS provided the relatively high spatial resolution needed for observing fire perimeters and smoke forecasting 10 Camp Fire High Resolution Rapid Refresh Smoke Forecasts

JPSS VIIRS higher spatial resolution fire radiative power observations are used in NOAA’s HRRR to provide smoke forecasts

https://rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke/ 11 New Capabilities for Fire Detection: VIIRS Night Time Light Observations

Ft. McMurray Fire: Rim Fire: ~Aug 2013 4-6 May 2016

Detection of lights from Help firefighters monitor the small/nascent fires (e.g., lightning status of nocturnal fire lines triggered) initially undetected by thermal infrared bands.

12 GOES-16 GLM and ABI Fire

August 11-12, 2018

GLM: Geostationary Lightning Mapper ABI: Advanced Baseline Imager

Scott Rudloski, NOAA/NESDIS/STAR

13 Satellite Proving Ground

NOAA engages external user community/stakeholders (e.g., US Forest Service) “I’ve been at State Fire and smoke initiative goals include: Emergency Services and - Improve satellite fire and aerosol product use for fire spread, air quality, the smoke model data was visibility. VITAL and still is for our Department of - Enhanced HRRR model to improve smoke forecasts Transportation partners - Address feedback from users/stakeholders dealing with AMTRAK - Training running through northern - Enhanced websites to display key products and central California. I’ve met these DOT folks in person and they would like to say thank you too!” – NWS Science and Operations Office in Hanford, CA

“I want to thank you all for the tremendous support we received from JPSS for the Camp Fire and incidences in California! My sincere gratitude to all of you who made the extra effort to support California!” – California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Training via https://www.meted.ucar.edu/satmet/western_ wildfires_2019/navmenu.php?tab=1&page=1- UCAR COMET 0-0&type=flash

15 What’s Next? Planning for 2030- 2050 What data will help the US and its global partners prepare, fight, and recover from fires in a drier, hotter world? GEO-XO Virtual Fire Workshop: June 3-5

Processed ▪ Focus on identifying gaps in information Raw Data Data / needed for critical operations as well as Products longer-term planning and policy-making

End-User

▪ Participants include a wide range of federal, state, local, academic, and Decision / commercial stakeholders representing a Policy-Makers critical path from planners through first responders 16 Outline

• Fire Weather Forecasting

• Fire Detection/Monitoring

• Fire Weather Research

17 Challenges for Research

18 NOAA Research to Improve Fire Weather Models

High-Resolution Rapid Refresh-Smoke (HRRR-Smoke)

Significant improvements to NOAA’s fire weather model becoming operational 2020.

HRRR-Smoke predicts: ● 3D movement of wildfire smoke ● Impact of smoke on the weather ● Impact of weather on smoke

Applications ● Identifies ● Simulates smoke dispersion over flat and complex terrain from coast to coast ● Produces visibility forecasts ● Supports air quality forecasts HRRR-Smoke forecast from Sponsored by NOAA/NASA JPSS,

FAA,CIRES, CIRA 19 NCAR Research to Improve Fire Weather Models

Colorado Fire Prediction System – Project led by Jason Knievel of NCAR.

20 NCAR Research to Improve Fire Weather Models

Colorado Fire Prediction System – Project led by Jason Knievel of NCAR.

21 NCAR Research to Improve Fire Weather Models

Using HRRR to Predict Gust Fronts – Project led by Jim Bresch of NCAR.

22 USFS Research to Improve Fire Weather Models

Development of 1-km Firebuster – Shyh-Chin Chen USFS Riverside CA.

23 NOAA Research to Improve Aerosols in the Global Forecast System

GEFS-Aerosol organic carbon compares better against NASA’s GEOS-5 analyses than the current NWS aerosol model.

GEFS-Aerosol

A collaboration between OAR, NESDIS and NWS has produced a significantly improved global aerosol model (GEFS-Aerosol) that will be part of the latest version of the NWS Global Ensemble Forecasting NGAC System becoming operational this fall. NOAA Research to Improve Future Fire Weather Models

Ensemble prediction of the 2018 CA Camp Fire

● Ensemble wildfire forecast produced good results against measurements

● These results will be used to improve a plume-rise Yunyao Li & Daniel Tong algorithm for wildfires that will be used in NOAA’s NOAA Air Resources Laboratory advanced regional weather model. George Mason University NOAA Research to Visualize and Communicate Information

This experimental web-based tool is being test to create impact-based graphics and animations about weather hazards for a social-media savvy society NOAA/NASA FIREX-AQ

Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory led a comprehensive, multi- agency campaign led to investigate the impact of wildfire and agricultural biomass smoke on air quality and weather in the U.S.

NOAA’s Global Systems Laboratory provided HRRR-Smoke forecasts to assist planning of the flight and ground mobile lab measurements - HRRR visibility forecasts are used also in firefighting operations

NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory provided mission support through air quality modeling and forecasting using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model. NOAA Research to Improve Weather Forecasts, Models and Communication

Highlights: • Delivering two new models to NWS operations in 2020 • Conducting field studies to better understand aerosols and the impacts on weather and air quality • Building a unified modeling system to improve weather, smoke, and air quality forecasting, including – the detection and forecast conditions leading to the onset of fires

– fire emissions after the onset of fires 2018 Woolsey Fire, CA – weather forecasts from wildfire smoke • Improving tools for communicating

information to the public 28 Thank You

For questions contact:

Peter Roohr, PhD NWS OSTI Fire Weather R2O Chief, USFS NOAA Fire Weather Research MOU WG [email protected] 703-899-6727

29