2024 05/23 Jay Charney - Wildfire Forecasting

May 23, 2024  
Wildfire Fire-Atmosphere-Human Interactions on Multiple Scales - A Challenge for Research and for Operations - by Jay Charney

● Jay had majored in Physics while in college and he found a love in models

● Computer games were one of his main inspirations leading him to want to go into the field

● Jay joined the fire service in 2001 

● Received his PhD in meteorology

Jay talks about how much wildland fires are a big problem as well as how his meteorology is important when working with wildfires. The ability to determine wind patterns and combustion is super important for firefighters to use when determining where the fires will go. Wildfires are increasing momentum, continuity, and conversion of energy. Jay describes how wildfire formation is similar to thunderstorms. 

Jay mentions that there aren't truly any equations and solutions to create a theory for fire spread, making it a very complicated process. Jay goes into the recent fires in 2022/2023 in Canada, and how many new people are starting to realize how much of an issue wildfires are becoming. Unfortunately, forest management changed to managing fires and then putting them out for the past 50ish years. This result was because fires are difficult to put out because there aren't enough firefighters and more fires have started to occur in remote forest areas. Air quality maps are becoming a lot more prominent everywhere because of this increase in fires as well. Jay describes how minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour forecasts are ideal but very difficult because of how difficult fire patterns are to predict. The use of the HRRR model to watch the smoke and find patterns and how the wind plumes will influence that. There's no technical air quality advisor, in states, counties, cities, etc are all different. Jay talks about the new model and experiments he and his colleagues are working on to start figuring out better burn patterns, smoke production, fuel consumption, etc. 

Another fact Jay mentions is how boreal forests have evolved to burn every 100-200 years.

Jay then opens it up to questions from the group.

You can view all of his presentation slides below