Automated Downscaling in Fire Weather

Incident report

Regional scale data

LAPS/STMAS

Downscaling

Fine scale forecast

Photo courtesy W. (Ruddy) Mell Fills in the small scales

Systems Research and Development - FX-Net (Ingests fire-specific data such as NESDIS fire products) - Gridded FX-Net used by USFS, BLM, NIFCModeling Research Project Management for - collaborative fire behavior and fire weather coupled model research (NIST, NCAR, NOAA) - Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)

- observations in the fire environment (NOAA, NASA, CU)

Program Development - NOAA/OAR /NWS Fire Weather Research Initiative - NSF Science and Technology Center Proposal (CU, USFS, NIST)

Fire Weather Research

Range of Scales & Multiple Models

4

regional

community /landscape

neighborhood /stand

basic fuel elements

NOAA/GSD WRF-Chem (LES mode)

NOAA/GSD Downscaling

NIST Level Set Firespread (faster than real time)

NIST-WFDS Fire Behavior (slower than real time)

NOAA FireWea 11/9/10

105 ----------104 m------------- 103 m-----------102 m -----------10 m ---------1 m --- 10-2 m

DOWNSCALING in SCHEMATIC DATA FLOW

Data Ingest

Intermediatedata files

GSI

Model prep

FORECAST MODEL

Verification

Analysis Scheme

Downscaling can work as a stand alone module

from background GSI or other

applications such as Fire wx.

Downscaling is also an integral part of variational LAPS

(STMAS).

Data Background (or cycled forecast)Observations

Standalone downscaling

module

LAPS Variational LAPS (with downscaling)

A example: Four Mile Canyon Fire, Boulder, CO (6 Sept. 2010)

• No surface OBS in Four Mile Canyon;

• Few OBS over the higher terrain;

• Observed wind over complex terrain is known to be unreliable

• How to evaluate?

LAPS 1km wind Analysis, 6 Sept. 2010, 22UTC

Example of Downscaling: Four Mile Canyon Fire

Initial input at 8km resolution

Surface U wind (colors)

NO

RTH

-SO

UTH

EAST – WEST (km)

0 100 200

363330272421181512 9 6 3 0 -3 -6

Contour lines: topography

Downscaled output at 1km resolution

Finer details in wind in response to high resolution terrain EAST – WEST

(km)

0 100 200

Developmental Testbed Center

8

Facility where NWP research and operational communities interact to accelerate testing and evaluation of new models and techniques for research applications and operational implementation, without interfering with current operations

CIRA recent contributions include: WRF microphysics sensitivity analysis Publication in progress for QPF

verification results from HMT-West winter exercises for 2011 and 2012

DTC quarterly Newsletter ‘Transitions’ Development and implementation of WRF Domain

Wizard and WRF Portal—graphical user interface to WRF