A21A-0040
Wild Fire Emissions for the NOAA Operational HYSPLIT Smoke Model
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Ho-Chun Huang1,2, Susan M ONeill3, Mark Ruminski4, Perry Shafran1,2, Jeffrey McQueen1, Geoff DiMego1, Shobha Kondragunta4, Jerry Gorline5, Jian-Ping Huang1,2, Barbara Stunder6, Ariel F Stein6, Ivanka Stajner7, Sikchya Upadhayay7,8 and Narasimhan K Larkin3, (1)National Centers for Environmental Prediction - Environmental Modeling Center, College Park, MD, United States, (2)IMSG, College Park, MD, United States, (3)US Forest Service, PNW Research Station, Portland, OR, United States, (4)NOAA/NESDIS/STAR, College Park, MD, United States, (5)NOAA Meteorological Development Laboratory, Silver Spring, MD, United States, (6)NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, College Park, MD, United States, (7)NOAA NWS, Office of Science and Technology Integration, Silver Spring, MD, United States, (8)Syneren Technologies, Arlington, VA, United States
Abstract:
Particulate Matter (PM) generated from forest fires often lead to degraded visibility and unhealthy air quality in nearby and downstream areas. To provide near-real time PM information to the state and local agencies, the NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS) operational HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model) smoke modeling system (NWS/HYSPLIT smoke) provides the forecast of smoke concentration resulting from fire emissions driven by the NWS North American Model 12 km weather predictions. The NWS/HYSPLIT smoke incorporates the U.S. Forest Service BlueSky Smoke Modeling Framework (BlueSky) to provide smoke fire emissions along with the input fire locations from the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)’s Hazard Mapping System fire and smoke detection system. Experienced analysts inspect satellite imagery from multiple sensors onboard geostationary and orbital satellites to identify the location, size and duration of smoke emissions for the model. NWS/HYSPLIT smoke is being updated to use a newer version of USFS BlueSky. The updated BlueSky incorporates the Fuel Characteristic Classification System version 2 (FCCS2) over the continental U.S. and Alaska. FCCS2 includes a more detailed description of fuel loadings with additional plant type categories. The updated BlueSky also utilizes an improved fuel consumption model and fire emission production system. For the period of August 2014 and June 2015, NWS/HYSPLIT smoke simulations show that fire smoke emissions with updated BlueSky are stronger than the current operational BlueSky in the Northwest U.S. For the same comparisons, weaker fire smoke emissions from the updated BlueSky were observed over the middle and eastern part of the U.S. A statistical evaluation of NWS/HYSPLIT smoke predicted total column concentration compared to NOAA NESDIS GOES EAST Aerosol Smoke Product retrievals is underway. Preliminary results show that using the newer version of BlueSky leads to improved performance of NWS/HYSPLIT-smoke for June 2015. These results are partially due to the default fuel loading selected for Canadian fires that lead to stronger fire emissions there. The use of more realistic Canadian fuel loading may improve NWS/HYSPLIT smoke forecast.
