NOAA Develops Tool to Predict Hourly US Wildfire Hazards

Scientists at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Global Systems Laboratory said it has developed an hourly assessment of wildfire potential across the U.S.

The Boulder, Colorado-based lab’s Hourly Wildfire Potential (HWP) Index, in development since 2019, provides frequent updates based of model-predicted weather conditions to forecast increases and decreases in possible fire activity, including the amount of emitted smoke, for forecasters, land managers, emergency personnel, and firefighters.

“There are lots of existing fire weather indices, but the novel thing here is to be able to predict hourly variability in fire activity related to the weather conditions,” said Eric James, a GSL research physical scientist. “Applying the HWP to a weather model like the HRRR (High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model) provides an inexpensive way to anticipate changes in fire activity without running a computationally expensive fire behavior model.”

The experimental tool was created based on three years of measurements of radiant heat captured by satellites flying over large wildfires in the western United States. It then incorporates predicted winds to estimate fire spread and intensity, humidity to estimate influence of atmospheric dryness on fuel moisture, and soil moisture derived from the HRRR’s advanced land surface model to predict the response of flammable vegetation to precipitation and drought.

What sets HWP apart from other established fire indices is that it’s the first index designed specifically for use with hourly, high-resolution, storm-scale weather models, NOAA said.

Photo: This visualization displays conditions favorable for wildfire growth across the U.S. on August 21. Credit: NOAA Global Systems Laboratory

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters USA Wildfire Aerospace