Wildfire outbreaks require the alignment of several factors, including temperature, humidity, winds and the lack of moisture in fuels such as trees, shrubs and grasses. These factors have strong direct or indirect ties to current weather, climate variability and climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration supports weather forecasting throughout a wildfire’s lifecycle: before, during and after the wildfire.
Drought conditions can set the stage for wildfires.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center provides seasonal temperature and precipitation predictions important to assessing fire risk. The National Center for Environmental Prediction, or NCEP, uses a suite of numerical weather prediction models to provide fire managers with actionable information on how near-term environmental conditions will influence fire risk, fire behavior and smoke impacts. These models provide temperature, humidity, wind, lightning and precipitation forecasts to aid in planning at the scale of days to a week.
During wildfire events, NOAA’s National Weather Service provides weather forecasts and interpretation services to help emergency personnel and public safety officials make decisions. Specially trained incident meteorologists, or IMETs, can be deployed to wildfire command centers, where they generate real-time fire weather forecasts to support firefighting operations. GOES and POES satellites are used to monitor wildfires and track smoke. High-resolution weather models are used to simulate how smoke will move and to predict its effects on weather, air quality and visibility.
Once the fire is extinguished, there may still be weather-related hazards. For example, communities below a burn scar face increased flooding threat. NWS forecasters closely monitor burn scars, using high-resolution weather models, satellite observations, Doppler radar and their knowledge of local terrain to identify when even modest rainstorms could produce a flooding threat.
Research shows that changes in climate are creating warmer and drier conditions, leading to longer and more active fire seasons in the western United States.
Steve Ackerman and Jonathan Martin, professors in the UW-Madison department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, are guests on Wisconsin Public Radio at noon the last Monday of each month. Send them your questions at stevea@ssec.wisc.edu or jemarti1@wisc.edu.
