Smoke Forecasting for the WE-CAN and BB-FLUX Field Campaigns Using the HRRR-Smoke Modeling System

The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh with Smoke (HRRR-Smoke) model is based on the HRRR numerical weather prediction modeling system. The model simulates primary aerosols (smoke) from wildland fires in real time on a 3km resolution grid over the CONUS domain. The HRRR-Smoke modeling system estimates biomass burning (BB) emissions and simulates fire plume rise in an inline mode by ingesting the fire radiative power data from the VIIRS and MODIS satellite instruments.

The experimental HRRR-Smoke forecasting system are used in planning of aircraft sampling of the smoke plumes. The aircraft measurements are conducted by the Western Wildfire Experiment for Cloud Chemistry, Aerosol Absorption and Nitrogen (WE-CAN) and Biomass Burning Fluxes of Trace Gases and Aerosols using solar occultation flux (BB-FLUX) field campaigns during summer 2018. The model is set up and run at NOAA’s Global System Division to provide smoke forecasting products 4 times a day with 36 hours lead time. The forecast products include distribution of smoke near the ground, at 3000 and 6000ft above ground levels, and vertically integrated smoke throughout entire atmospheric column over the northwestern US. Additionally, vertical cross-sections of smoke distributions along 10 latitude and longitude lines in the northwestern US were provided. Figure 1 shows the distribution of smoke from one of the model forecasts along 122.5W longitude, between 37 and 47 latitudes, and up to 250mb altitude.

In this presentation, we discuss the HRRR-Smoke forecasting for the WE-CAN and BB-FLUX field campaigns, and the simulations of smoke transport focusing on the cases sampled by the aircraft flights, and some model verifications using the in-situ aircraft measurements.

Figure 1. Vertical cross-section of forecasted smoke distribution for 18Z August 8, 2018.