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Strong Atmospheric Updrafts Increase the Danger Associated with Wildfires

Featured Image: Picture of a wildfire by skeeze on Pixabay

Paper: Extreme Pyroconvective Updrafts During a Megafire
Authors: B. Rodriguez, N. P. Lareau, D. E. Kingsmill, and C. B. Clements

Atmospheric updrafts, or columns of air moving quickly upward, are typically associated with severe thunderstorms and tornadoes and have been studied using radar and airplane data for decades. The extreme heat from large, intense fires can also cause updrafts, but this type of updraft has barely been studied by atmospheric science researchers. Understanding the formation and structure of fire-generated updrafts is important because they can be hazardous to aircraft, can loft embers far distances and spark new fires, and can even initiate fire-generated thunderstorms. A recent study has revealed just how powerful these updrafts above large fires can be.

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Satellites Predict Forest Fires Better Than Experts

Featured image: by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

Paper: Satellite Hydrology Observations as Operational Indicators of Forecasted Fire Danger Across the Contiguous United States

Authors: Alireza Farahmand, E. Natasha Stavros, John T. Reager, Ali Behrangi, James T. Randerson, and Brad Quayle.

Forest Fires are a natural part of the ecosystem that clear out old and overgrown vegetation and recycle nutrients back into the soil.  However, increasing growth into these forested areas has increased the wildland fire hazards to people and their homes and businesses. This has subsequently increased the use of resources and funds to battle and restore damage from these fires. In the United States alone, federal wildfire suppression expenditures tripled from $0.4 billion per year to $1.4 billion per year in the last century. These economic impacts inspired researchers from the California Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of California – Irvine and the United States Department of Agriculture to see if they could improve wildfire prediction beyond our current limited methods using subjective expert knowledge and weather forecasts.

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