Abstract
Weather is an important factor that determines smoke development, which is essential information for planning smoke field measurements. This study identifies the synoptic systems that would favor to produce the desired smoke plumes for the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE). Daysmoke and PB-Piedmont (PB-P) models are used to simulate smoke plume evolution during the day time and smoke drainage and fog formation during the nighttime for hypothetical prescribed burns on 5–8 February 2011 at the Stewart Army Base in the southeastern United States. Daysmoke simulation is evaluated using the measured smoke plume heights of two historical prescribed burns at the Eglin Air Force Base. The simulation results of the hypothetical prescribed burns show that the smoke plume is not fully developed with low plume height during the daytime on 5 February when the burn site is under the warm, moist, and windy conditions connected to a shallow cyclonic system and a cold front. However, smoke drainage and fog are formed during the nighttime. Well-developed smoke plumes, which rise mainly vertically, extend to a majority portion of the planetary boundary layer, and have steady clear boundaries, appear on both 6 and 7 February when the air is cool but dry and calm during a transition between two low-pressure systems. The plume rises higher on the second day, mainly due to lighter winds. The smoke on 8 February shows a loose structure of large horizontal dispersion and low height after passage of a deep low-pressure system with strong cool and dry winds. Smoke drainage and fog formation are rare for the nights during 5–8 February. It is concluded that prescribed burns conducted during a period between two low-pressure systems would likely generate the desired plumes for FASMEE measurement during daytime. Meanwhile, as the fire smolders into the night, the burns would likely lead to fog formation when the burn site is located in the warm and moist section of a low-pressure system or a cold front.
Highlights
Smoke models are numerical tools for simulating smoke and the air quality impacts of wildland fires
Atmosphere 2018, 9, 259 coupling between the fire behavior, plume rise, and dispersion. They rely on a series of executed modules estimating the fire emissions and heat release, and parameterize the plume rise based on meteorological data, fuel conditions and assumed fire progression
Some operational air quality models still estimate smoke plume rise, a key modeling outcome that determines the relative impacts on local and regional air quality, using the Briggs scheme [14], originally developed for power plant stacks based on similarity theory
Summary
Smoke models are numerical tools for simulating smoke and the air quality impacts of wildland fires. Various types of smoke models (box, Gaussian, puff, particle, Eulerian, full physics) have been developed based on atmospheric transport and dispersion theory and chemical mechanisms or statistical relationships [1]. Local smoke models such as VSMOKE, SASEM, WFDS, Daysmoke, and PB-P [2,3,4,5,6] provide spatial patterns and temporal evolutions of the smoke plume and concentrations of fire emitted gases and particles near a burn site for assessing the fire impacts on visibility, traffic, air quality, human and ecosystem health, etc. Some operational air quality models still estimate smoke plume rise, a key modeling outcome that determines the relative impacts on local and regional air quality, using the Briggs scheme [14], originally developed for power plant stacks based on similarity theory
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