scholarly journals An Accurate Fire‐Spread Algorithm in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model Using the Level‐Set Method

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 908-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Domingo Muñoz‐Esparza ◽  
Branko Kosović ◽  
Pedro A. Jiménez ◽  
Janice L. Coen
2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 497-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Mandel ◽  
J. D. Beezley ◽  
A. K. Kochanski

Abstract. We describe the physical model, numerical algorithms, and software structure of WRF-Fire. WRF-Fire consists of a fire-spread model, implemented by the level-set method, coupled with the Weather Research and Forecasting model. In every time step, the fire model inputs the surface wind, which drives the fire, and outputs the heat flux from the fire into the atmosphere, which in turn influences the atmosphere. The level-set method allows submesh representation of the burning region and flexible implementation of various kinds of ignition. WRF-Fire is distributed as a part of WRF and it uses the WRF parallel infrastructure for parallel computing.


Author(s):  
Alessio Golzio ◽  
Silvia Ferrarese ◽  
Claudio Cassardo ◽  
Gugliemina Adele Diolaiuti ◽  
Manuela Pelfini

AbstractWeather forecasts over mountainous terrain are challenging due to the complex topography that is necessarily smoothed by actual local-area models. As complex mountainous territories represent 20% of the Earth’s surface, accurate forecasts and the numerical resolution of the interaction between the surface and the atmospheric boundary layer are crucial. We present an assessment of the Weather Research and Forecasting model with two different grid spacings (1 km and 0.5 km), using two topography datasets (NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010, digital elevation models) and four land-cover-description datasets (Corine Land Cover, U.S. Geological Survey land-use, MODIS30 and MODIS15, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer land-use). We investigate the Ortles Cevadale region in the Rhaetian Alps (central Italian Alps), focusing on the upper Forni Glacier proglacial area, where a micrometeorological station operated from 28 August to 11 September 2017. The simulation outputs are compared with observations at this micrometeorological station and four other weather stations distributed around the Forni Glacier with respect to the latent heat, sensible heat and ground heat fluxes, mixing-layer height, soil moisture, 2-m air temperature, and 10-m wind speed. The different model runs make it possible to isolate the contributions of land use, topography, grid spacing, and boundary-layer parametrizations. Among the considered factors, land use proves to have the most significant impact on results.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 2008-2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Zhang ◽  
Ying-Hwa Kuo ◽  
Shu-Ya Chen ◽  
Xiang-Yu Huang ◽  
Ling-Feng Hsiao

Abstract The nonlocal excess phase observation operator for assimilating the global positioning system (GPS) radio occultation (RO) sounding data has been proven by some research papers to produce significantly better analyses for numerical weather prediction (NWP) compared to the local refractivity observation operator. However, the high computational cost and the difficulties in parallelization associated with the nonlocal GPS RO operator deter its application in research and operational NWP practices. In this article, two strategies are designed and implemented in the data assimilation system for the Weather Research and Forecasting Model to demonstrate the capability of parallel assimilation of GPS RO profiles with the nonlocal excess phase observation operator. In particular, to solve the parallel load imbalance problem due to the uneven geographic distribution of the GPS RO observations, round-robin scheduling is adopted to distribute GPS RO observations among the processing cores to balance the workload. The wall clock time required to complete a five-iteration minimization on a demonstration Antarctic case with 106 GPS RO observations is reduced from more than 3.5 h with a single processing core to 2.5 min with 106 processing cores. These strategies present the possibility of application of the nonlocal GPS RO excess phase observation operator in operational data assimilation systems with a cutoff time limit.


Author(s):  
Reneta Dimitrova ◽  
Ashish Sharma ◽  
Harindra J. S. Fernando ◽  
Ismail Gultepe ◽  
Ventsislav Danchovski ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 7393-7410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiani Tan ◽  
Joshua S. Fu ◽  
Gregory R. Carmichael ◽  
Syuichi Itahashi ◽  
Zhining Tao ◽  
...  

Abstract. This study compares the performance of 12 regional chemical transport models (CTMs) from the third phase of the Model Inter-Comparison Study for Asia (MICS-Asia III) on simulating the particulate matter (PM) over East Asia (EA) in 2010. The participating models include the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Community Multiscale Air Quality (WRF-CMAQ; v4.7.1 and v5.0.2), the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System coupled with CMAQ (RAMS-CMAQ; v4.7.1 and v5.0.2), the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem; v3.6.1 and v3.7.1), Goddard Earth Observing System coupled with chemistry (GEOS-Chem), a non-hydrostatic model coupled with chemistry (NHM-Chem), the Nested Air Quality Prediction Modeling System (NAQPMS) and the NASA-Unified WRF (NU-WRF). This study investigates three model processes as the possible reasons for different model performances on PM. (1) Models perform very differently in the gas–particle conversion of sulfur (S) and oxidized nitrogen (N). The model differences in sulfur oxidation ratio (50 %) are of the same magnitude as that in SO42- concentrations. The gas–particle conversion is one of the main reasons for different model performances on fine mode PM. (2) Models without dust emission modules can perform well on PM10 at non-dust-affected sites but largely underestimate (up to 50 %) the PM10 concentrations at dust sites. The implementation of dust emission modules in the models has largely improved the model accuracies at dust sites (reduce model bias to −20 %). However, both the magnitude and distribution of dust pollution are not fully captured. (3) The amounts of modeled depositions vary among models by 75 %, 39 %, 21 % and 38 % for S wet, S dry, N wet and N dry depositions, respectively. Large inter-model differences are found in the washout ratios of wet deposition (at most 170 % in India) and dry deposition velocities (generally 0.3–2 cm s−1 differences over inland regions).


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inderpreet Kaur ◽  
Anton Butenko ◽  
Gianni Pagnini

Abstract. Fire-spotting is often responsible for a dangerous flare up in the wildfire and causes secondary ignitions isolated from the primary fire zone leading to perilous situations. In this paper a complete physical parametrisation of fire-spotting is presented within a formulation aimed to include random processes into operational fire spread models. This formulation can be implemented into existing operational models as a post-processing scheme at each time step, without calling for any major changes in the original framework. In particular, the efficacy of this formulation has already been shown for wildfire simulators based on an Eulerian moving interface method, namely the Level Set Method (LSM) that forms the baseline of the operational software WRF-SFIRE, and for wildfire simulators based on a Lagrangian front tracking technique, namely the Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) that forms the baseline of the operational software FOREFIRE. The simple and computationally less expensive parametrisation includes the important parameters necessary for describing the landing behavior of the firebrands. The results from different simulations with a simple model based on the LSM highlight the response of the parametrisation to varying fire intensities, wind conditions and different firebrand radii. The contribution of the firebrands towards increasing the fire perimeter varies according to different concurrent conditions and the simulation results prove to be in agreement with the physical processes. Among the many rigorous approaches available in literature to model the firebrand transport and distribution, the approach presented here proves to be simple yet versatile for application to operational fire spread models.


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