A114-0008
Evaluation and intercomparison of multiple models forecasting biomass-burning smoke during FIREX-AQ 2019
Friday, 11 December 2020
Poster
Xinxin Ye1, Pablo E Saide1, Arlindo daSilva2, Shobha Kondragunta3, Alexei Lyapustin2, Yujie Wang4, Jeffrey McQueen5, Jian-Ping Huang6, Richard J Engelen7, Vincent-Henri Peuch8, Mark Parrington8, R. Bradley Pierce9, Ravan Ahmadov10, Georg A Grell11, Didier Davignon12, Paul Makar13, Jack Chen14, Louisa K Emmons15, Rajesh Kumar15, Farren Leto Herron-Thorpe16, Gregory R Carmichael17, Gonzalo Andres Ferrada18, Johnathan W Hair19, Marta A Fenn19,20 and Taylor Shingler21, (1)University of California Los Angeles, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (2)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)NOAA College Park, College Park, MD, United States, (4)University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, United States, (5)NOAA College Park, National Weather Service, College Park, MD, United States, (6)NOAA, Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, National Weather Service, College Park, MD, United States, (7)ECMWF, Reading, United Kingdom, (8)European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, United Kingdom, (9)University of Wisconsin Madison, Space Science and Engineering Center, Madison, WI, United States, (10)NOAA ESRL/CSL, Boulder, CO, United States, (11)NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (12)Canadian meteorological Centre Operations, MSC-CCMEP, Dorval, QC, Canada, (13)Environment and Climate Change Canada, Air Quality Research Division, Toronto, ON, Canada, (14)Environment Canada Dorval, Air Quality Research Division, Dorval, QC, Canada, (15)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (16)Washington State University, Pullman, WA, United States, (17)Univ Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States, (18)University of Iowa, Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, Iowa City, IA, United States, (19)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (20)SSAI, Hampton, VA, United States, (21)University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
Abstract:
Smoke induced by pollutant emissions from wildfires significantly degrade air quality and visibility and pose severe risks to human health. However, biomass burning smoke remains as one of the largest sources of uncertainties in air quality forecasts. In this work, we compare and evaluate twelve air quality and/or fire smoke forecast systems under the same framework for the Williams Flats fire that occurred in Washington State, U.S. on 2-10 August 2019. Evaluation is performed against observations collected from multiple platforms, including GOES-17 FRP, MODIS MAIAC AOD retrievals, surface PM2.5 concentrations, as well as backscattering profiles measured by DIAL-HSRL on-board DC-8 aircraft during the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) field campaign.
Comparison of fire emissions shows significant discrepancy among models in terms of daily total emissions and diurnal variation patterns. Also, observed diurnal cycle often deviates from the fixed assumptions used by the forecasts. Negative bias of smoke AOD enhancements (sAOD) and underestimated area of regions with sAOD>0.05 are seen for most models, especially on the days when the development of fire was more rapid than predicted by assuming persistence of burning. Although some models have unbiased PM2.5 predictions, the linear correlation between predicted and observed values are low. In terms of plume heights, most models present overshoot of emissions on days with slight injection and undershoot on days with significant injection. These misrepresentations in vertical placement of emissions were closely related to discrepancies in model performance for surface PM2.5 and total column aerosol loading, highlighting the importance of plume injection height parameterization. By consolidating performance of multiple forecast systems, the results shed light on pathways to future improvements of smoke forecast.
