Welcome to the Wildland Fire Research conducted in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division!
Our work comprises a program aimed at studying weather impacts on and interactions with wildland fire, an atmospheric phenomenon that threatens life, air and water quality, personal and public property, and is a responder and contributor to aspects of climate change. Our activites address all 3 components of the NCAR Mission, (1) to understand the behavior of the atmosphere and related physical, biological, and social systems with some unique studies revealing fundamental understanding about the phenomenon, (2) to support, enhance, and extend the capabilities of the university community and the broader scientific community, nationally and internationally with contribution of components to the community model WRF and extensive service activities, and (3) to foster the transfer of knowledge and technology for the betterment of life on Earth with applied research components that are designed to be a testbed or prototype of national wildfire warning systems. It also supports NESL's Scientific Objective to understand and predict weather and climate that have high human impact, as this atmospheric phenomenon and the weather conditions controlling it create yearly losses of $2 billion directly in fire suppression with total yearly economic losses and longterm damage estimated to be 10-50 times that per year. With multiscale weather coupled to fire behavior simulations spanning 4 orders of magnitude, this work supports MMM's mission to advance the understanding of meso- and microscale aspects of weather and climate and constantly seeks to apply this knowledge to benefit society. In support of MMM's aims to conduct collaborative Earth-System Science Research aimed at advancing the knowledge of earth-system processes, we work to advance the science of atmospheric prediction across many scales in response to societal needs, develop and refine advanced, state-of-the-science research and application tools (including models, instrumentation and data sets) that we provide and support as a service to the community, and respond to this urgent societal need.
The two tools we use to study fires are computer models that coupled weather and fire behavior and an infrared imager, which shows the thermal energy being released by the fire. Together, we use them to look at how fires create their own weather - what makes fires spread as fast as they do and in what direction, as well as why they commonly gather themselves to an interface between furning and unburning fuel called a 'fire line', create fire whirls, bow into fingers as they spread, and create dangerous fingers of flame that shoot ahead of the fireline. We use the infrared imagery to see what is happening within the fire line and help us model large wildfires. We aim to be able to use this to anticipate and forecast wildfire behavior.