Forest Fire Weather in the Southern Appalachians

Mccarthy, E. F.

doi:10.1175/1520-0493(1923)51<182:ffwits>2.0.co;2

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…To gain a concise numerical conception we take two examples from table 12. Under the same relative humidity 609'~ but with temperaturecha nge -from O°C to 2S oC, the time of bllrn ing decreases from 1840 sec to 1620 sec, i,e.…”

Section: Is55mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fires and The Weather

Suzuki¹

1928

Journal of the Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University

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A more accurate tneasure mcnt was made wit!dn the closed g1 a. <;5 lJellJur in which a polymcte r ::tnd a thermomet er were placed Leside an ir1cem;e st ick and in which t he relative bum idity in t he jar could be regul ated }}y means of sul phuric acid. T he result was as follows ; Humidi ty Length Tempet:l.ture ]3% 24" 75 em 30°C 92% 25.05 em 30°C So the contraction b ecame ] .2 % (i. C. 0. 15 % per 10 % of humidity)

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Section: Is55mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fires and The Weather

Suzuki¹

1928

Journal of the Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University

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“…The local state of the atmosphere in days prior to wildfire and during wildfire activity is determined by synoptic-scale weather systems, which would determine the conditions of fuels and set the background for other mesoscale factors responsible for the start and spread of fire. Linking synoptic features to extreme wildfire behavior or fire danger and localizing major wildfires in relation to existing fronts and low-and high-pressure areas has long been the subject of fire weather research (e.g., Beals, 1914;McCarthy, 1923;Werth, 2011). The majority of such studies found the most threatening synoptic patterns to be the ones creating conditions of increasing wind, accompanied by unusually low relative humidity, with an antecedent period of warm and dry stable conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 2017 Split wildfire in Croatia: evolution and the role of meteorological conditions

Tomašević

Cheung²,

Vučetić³

et al. 2022

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The Split wildfire in July 2017, which was one of the most severe wildfires in the history of this Croatian World Heritage Site, is the focus in this study. The Split fire is a good example of a wildfire–urban interface, with unexpected fire behavior including rapid downslope spread to the coastal populated area. This study clarifies the meteorological conditions behind the fire event, those that have limited the effectiveness of firefighting operations, and the rapid escalation and expansion of the fire zones within 30 h. The Split fire propagation was first reconstructed using radio logs, interviews with firefighters and pilots involved in the intervention, eyewitness statements, digital photographs from fire detection cameras, media, and the monthly firefighting journal. Four phases of fire development have been identified. Then, weather observations and numerical simulations using an enhanced-resolution operational model are utilized to analyze the dynamics in each phase of the fire runs. The synoptic background of the event includes large surface pressure gradient between the Azores anticyclone accompanied by a cold front and a cyclone over the southeastern Balkan Peninsula. At the upper level, there was a deep shortwave trough extending from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea, which developed into a cut-off low. Such synoptic conditions have resulted in the maximum fire weather index in 2017. Combined with topography, they also locally provoke the formation of the strong northeasterly bura wind along the Adriatic coast, which has been accompanied by a low-level jet (LLJ). The bura (downslope wind), with mid- to low-level gravity-wave breaking and turbulence mixing (as in the hydraulic jump theory), also facilitated the subsidence of dry air from the upper troposphere and rapid drying at the surface. This study demonstrates that numerical guidance that indicates the spatial and temporal occurrence of a LLJ is highly capable of explaining the Split fire evolution from the ignition potential to its extinguishment stage. Thus, in addition to the conventional fire weather indices, such products are able to improve fire weather behavior forecasting and in general more effective decision-making in fire management.

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“…The idea of using synoptic patterns to improve fire behavior and fire danger assessments was first proposed in the early‐20th century focused for fire danger in the U.S. (Beals, 1914; Joy, 1923; McCarthy, 1923) and was later applied to other fire prone regions around the world such as Australia (Foley, 1947), and Canada (Newark, 1975). Schroeder et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Character and Changing Frequency of Extreme California Fire Weather

2022

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Among U.S. states, California has the highest exposure to wildfires, with approximately 2,019,800 properties at risk (Verisk, 2020). The combination of increasing annually burned area (Abatzoglou & Williams, 2016;Westerling, 2016) and large exposure resulted in exceptional economic losses with more than 20US$ bn in 2018 alone (Munich-Re, 2019). Potential causes for the large increase in burned area in California (FIRE, 2020) are manifold (Jin et al., 2014) and include an increase in atmospheric temperature and aridity caused by climate variability and change (Abatzoglou & Williams, 2016;Williams et al., 2019), a decrease of precipitation in recent decades due to fewer winter storms (Prein et al., 2016), an earlier start and later end of the fire season (Jolly et al., 2015), changes in forest management (Parks et al., 2015;Tempel et al., 2014), an increase in population (Radeloff et al., 2018), and its expansion of dwellings and infrastructure into former wildlands (Hammer et al., 2007). Since the early 2000s, sub-daily observations of active fires from satellites have enabled products that estimate daily burned area on local scales (Artés et al., 2019;Davies et al., 2019), revolutionizing our ability to detect fire occurrence and progression. These observations allow us to analyze the impacts of weather on fire growth and confirm that the annual total burned area in California is disproportionately affected by a few large fires and those fires themselves burn most of the total burned area in only a few days.Traditionally, fire weather indexes-for example, Fosberg Fire Weather Index (Fosberg, 1978;Goodrick, 2002) or the Hot/Dry/Windy Index (Srock et al., 2018)-are used to predict days with the potential for rapid-fire-spread. Those indices typically depend on local observations that account for atmospheric static stability and humidity profile in the lower atmosphere (Haines, 1989), fuel condition (Amiro et al., 2005, and low-level wind speed (Amiro et al., 2005). More recent studies also found that upper-level and nocturnal meteorology can lead to rapidfire-spread (

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Forest Fire Weather in the Southern Appalachians

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

The Fires and The Weather

The Fires and The Weather

The 2017 Split wildfire in Croatia: evolution and the role of meteorological conditions

The Character and Changing Frequency of Extreme California Fire Weather

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