New Developments in Wildfire Emission and Dispersion Forecasting with FireWork – The Operational Canadian AQ Forecast System with Near-Real-Time Biomass-Burning Emissions 8th International Workshop on Air Quality Forecasting Research Toronto, Ontario, Canada Jack Chen1, Radenko Pavlovic2, Kerry Anderson3, Rodrigo Munoz-Alpizar2, Hugo Landry2, Michael D. Moran1 1Air Quality Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada 2Air Quality Modeling Applications Section, Environment and Climate Change Canada 3Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada 2017-01-10

FireWork System https://weather.gc.ca/firework FireWork products System runs twice daily (00z/12z) during North American fire season Apr.- Oct. Near-real-time fire data from Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (based on NOAA/NASA satellite info.) Hourly emissions (PM, VOC, NOx, NH3, CO, SO2) incorporated into the ECCC Regional Air Quality Deterministic Prediction System Differences in model results with / without fire emissions represent PM contributions from fire sources FireWork products PM2.5/PM10 maps and animations from fire sources AQHI based on FireWork forecasts Accumulated PM2.5 impacts over 24h Total column PM2.5/PM10 Other specialized products upon request (i.e. special fire activity near urban areas) http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/cmc/air/firework Forecasted PM2.5 contribution from wildfire (FireWork product) 2016-05-05 animation

Development of FireWork FireWork was first developed and demonstrated in 2011 System ran in experimental mode: 2013-2015 Paper published in 2015 Pavlovic et al., 2015, J. Air & Waste Manage. Assoc., 66, 819-841, DOI: 10.1080/10962247.2016.1158214. (IWAQFR 2011) It became an official operational product in Apr. 2016 New Development: Improve integration with the Canadian Forest Fire Emissions Prediction System (CFFEPS)

Canadian Wildland Fire Information System Current FireWork Operational System AVHRR / MODIS / VIIRS Canadian Wildland Fire Information System CWFIS Hotspot lat. / lon. Fuel type Fuel consumption obs. and forecast meteorology valid at local noon SMOKE Processor Uses one diurnal profile to convert emissions into hourly values Converts VOC, NOx, PM into model species Merges emissions with other major anthropogenic point sources FEPS (BlueSky) Total Daily Emissions per hotspot for PMs, VOCs, NOx, SO2, CO and NH3 CWFIS gets ignition/burning information from satellite retrievals – NOAA/NASA/USDA-Remote Sensing Applications Center Assume 38.5 hectares/hotspot ; FireWork runs twice daily initiated at 00 UTC and 12 UTC AQ model (GEM-MACH)

Limitations / Weaknesses Coarse temporal resolution – daily vs. hourly Uniform diurnal profile by local time Limited interaction between meteorology ↔ fire behavior Persistence assumption for 48-hr forecast Briggs approach to model plume injection height Fixed emission factors by FEPS Fixed chemical speciation profile

Vertical Profiles – PM2.5 (for the same grid) Primary Organic Carbon emissions from wildfire 2016-05-07 (Fort McMurry) 12000 g/sec F00-23 F24-48 Vertical Profiles – PM2.5 (for the same grid) 6h 10h 16h 32h FireWork PM2.5 forecast (a grid for Fort McMurry)

Plume injection Height Kahn et al. GRL v35 (2008) GRL vol. 35 FireWork for 20160504 - all points, hours in model domain

CFFEPS – Canadian Forest Fire Emissions Prediction System Developed by Canadian Forest Service - Natural Resources Canada Fuel moisture and rate of spread are adjusted following meteorology Elliptical fire growth model Emission types by flaming / smoldering / residual Updated emission factors (PM, NO, NMHC, NH3, CO, CO2, CH4 etc.) by fire type (Urbanski 2014) – extensible to fuel type dependence Plume injection height based on fire energy thermodynamics Injection height considers energy released to the atmosphere by the fire and the ambient (environmental) lapse rate. Fraction of energy that goes to the plume is mixed through air column above the fire, the plume will rise until thermal equilibrium with the environment. The plume is being raised by dry adiabatic lapse rate. Represent smoke plume on a tephigram. Q is energy enters plume, M is the mass of the plume. Orange triangle is energy per mass (Q/M) and is obtained by intersecting environmental lapse rate (ɣe), dry adiabat (ɣd) at speciifc surface temperature/potential temp/height/pressure. Subscripts is for S:surface, t:plume top, m:modified zone. Entrainment is captured by assuming conical plume shape that increases plume width with height for a circular fire. Entrainment height and angle captures the increase in volume with height.

Canadian Wildland Fire Information System Current Operational System FireWork+CFFEPS System obs. and forecast meteorology valid at local noon AVHRR / MODIS / VIIRS Canadian Wildland Fire Information System CWFIS Hotspot lat. / lon. Fuel type Fuel consumption FEPS (BlueSky) Total Daily Emissions per hotspot for PMs, VOCs, NOx, SO2, CO and NH3 SMOKE Processor Uses one diurnal profile to convert emissions into hourly values Converts VOC, NOx, PM into model species Merges emissions with other major anthropogenic point sources AQ model (GEM-MACH) CFFEPS Hourly Emissions Also available: Plumerise parameters Fire energy etc. GEM hourly forecast meteorology Post Processing area (smoldering) vs. point (flaming) chemical speciation (smoldering vs. flaming) unit / format conversions etc. QA and summary / reporting AQ model (GEM-MACH) FireWork runs twice daily initiated at 00 UTC and 12 UTC

Canadian Wildland Fire Information System FireWork+CFFEPS System obs. and forecast meteorology valid at local noon AVHRR / MODIS / VIIRS Canadian Wildland Fire Information System CWFIS Hotspot lat. / lon. Fuel type Fuel consumption CFFEPS Hourly Emissions Also available: Plumerise parameters Fire energy etc. GEM hourly forecast meteorology Post Processing area (smoldering) vs. point (flaming) chemical speciation (smoldering vs. flaming) unit / format conversions etc. QA and summary / reporting AQ model (GEM-MACH) Forecast meteorology extracted at location include temp, and pressure height for 850, 700, 500, 250hpa FireWork runs twice daily initiated at 00 UTC and 12 UTC

Proof-of-Concept Experiment FireWork_Base Case vs. FireWork+CFFEPS Simulation: 2016-05-01 to 2016-05-10 AB

Emission Differences: FEPS vs. CFFEPS (May 1-10 2016) CO  ~60% PMF  ~45% Much of the differences resulted from EF updates (e.g. flm./smo./res. PM10_EF 8.59/19.63/19.63 in FEPS  13.75/20.33/30.26 CFFEPS ; PM2.5_EF 7.28/16.63/16.63  11.66/17.23/25.64 ; CO_EF 71.8/210/210  71.4/96.5/177.5 – unit g/kg) (Urbaski et al 2014) combustion efficiency (MCE) is ~0.99 for pure flaming and ~0.65 to 0.85 (with typical value 0.80) for smoldering, these values used to calculate smoldering vs flaming EF. PM10 EF were not specified in Urbanski 2014, used the relations defined by Ward et al 1993 to calculate EF_PM10=1.18*EM_PM2.5 PMC  ~270%

Preliminary Results 6h 10h 32h 16h Kahn et al. GRL v35 (2008) GRL vol. 35 10h 16h 6h 32h

10-day Avg. PM2.5 Contributions from Fire FireWork Base Case FireWork CFFEPS 33 PM2.5 Stations in Alberta May 1-10 2016 Obs. Avg. 10.4 μg/m3 Forecast Avg. 5.5 μg/m3  5.9 μg/m3 Mean Error 9.3 μg/m3 8.9 μg/m3 NMB % -22% -18% R. 0.18 0.22

PM2.5 Time Series: Fort McMurray (AB) PM2.5 (µg/m3) Mean Error 18 μg/m3  13 μg/m3 NMB % -0.7% 0.2% R. 0.51 0.58

PM2.5 Time Series: Fort Chipewyan (AB) (~200km north) PM2.5 (µg/m3) Mean Error 9 μg/m3  3 μg/m3 NMB % +0.3% +0.1% R. 0.17 0.14

Summary and Future work FireWork system has been updated to integrate with the Canadian Forest Fire Emissions Prediction System (CFFEPS) Fire emissions vary by forecast hourly meteorology following fire behavior Fire emission injection height is parameterized by fire thermodynamics Updated emission factors and chemical speciation profiles Initial tests show promising results Continue testing and performance evaluation Transition to operational implementation R&D side: influence of fire heat flux on GEM microphysics, update emission factor by fuel type etc. A more complete evaluation will be carried out for both 2014/2015 fire season.

Thank you. Please also visit FireWork posters by Radenko P Thank you! Please also visit FireWork posters by Radenko P. and Rodrigo M.

Fort McKay (AB) (~60km north) PM2.5 (µg/m3) Mean Error 16 μg/m3  20 μg/m3 NMB % -0.2% +0.2% Corr. 0.12 0.37