Fourth Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology

Tuesday, 13 November 2001: 1:50 PM
Coupled atmosphere-fire model simulations in various fuel types in complex terrain
Janice L. Coen, NCAR, Boulder, CO; and T. L. Clark and D. Latham
Poster PDF (122.6 kB)
A three-dimensional, nonhydrostatic atmospheric model has been coupled with a wildfire model to create a tool that represents the complex interactions between wildfires and local winds, even in mountainous terrain. We will describe the recent advances in the model and a suite of experiments that involve a fireline propagating through various fuel types (including grass and chaparral) in different types of topography, illustrating the impact of fuel type and sloped terrain on simulated fire spread rates and behavior. Video animations of these simulations will be shown at the conference highlighting some of the interesting features of the fire and flow.

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