Near-term fire weather forecasting in the Pacific Northwest using 500-hPa map types

Reed Humphrey; John Saltenberger; John T. Abatzoglou; Alison Cullen

doi:10.1071/WF23117

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Near-term fire weather forecasting in the Pacific Northwest using 500-hPa map types

Reed Humphrey

^A ^* , John Saltenberger ^B , John T. Abatzoglou

^C and Alison Cullen

^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A University of Washington, Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, Seattle, WA, USA.

^B Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, Portland, OR, USA.

^C University of California Merced, Management of Complex Systems, Merced, CA, USA.

^* Correspondence to: reedhum@uw.edu

International Journal of Wildland Fire 33, WF23117 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23117

Submitted: 18 July 2023 Accepted: 13 April 2024 Published: 1 May 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Background

Near-term forecasts of fire danger based on predicted surface weather and fuel dryness are widely used to support the decisions of wildfire managers. The incorporation of synoptic-scale upper-air patterns into predictive models may provide additional value in operational forecasting.

Aims

In this study, we assess the impact of synoptic-scale upper-air patterns on the occurrence of large wildfires and widespread fire outbreaks in the US Pacific Northwest. Additionally, we examine how discrete upper-air map types can augment subregional models of wildfire risk.

Methods

We assess the statistical relationship between synoptic map types, surface weather and wildfire occurrence. Additionally, we compare subregional fire danger models to identify the predictive value contributed by upper-air map types.

Key results

We find that these map types explain variation in wildfire occurrence not captured by fire danger indices based on surface weather alone, with specific map types associated with significantly higher expected daily ignition counts in half of the subregions.

Conclusions

We observe that incorporating upper-air map types enhances the explanatory power of subregional fire danger models.

Implications

Our approach provides value to operational wildfire management and provides a template for how these methods may be implemented in other regions.

Keywords: fire danger, fire management, forecasting, Pacific Northwest, policy, subregional, predictive services, synoptic, weather.

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