Mike Sestak

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Integration of Wildfire Emissions
into Models-3/CMAQ with the Prototypes Community
Smoke Emissions Modeling (CSEM) System and BlueSky
Mike Sestak Doug Fox CIRA Susan ONeill Sue
Ferguson USDA Forest Service, Seattle Jason
Ching NOAA/EPA
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What is the problem?

• Increased use of fire
• Agriculture, forestry, military, and rangeland
• Competition for air shed

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Fire Effects - Visibility

• IMPROVE program measures visibility speciated
  aerosol data representing Class I areas relates
  them to each other for the regional haze rule.
• Majority of fine particle species emitted from
  fires are organic and elemental carbon.
• Carbonaceous gas to particle conversion is poorly
  understood.
• Wildland fire contributes to the 20 worst
  visibility days, especially in the west.
• Monthly OC contribution to total fine mass
  reaches 80 in some western US locations, longer
  term 10-30.
• IMPROVE monitoring suggests a range of 10-40 of
  OC (organic carbon contribution to PM2.5) on the
  high mass days (20 worst visibility) may be from
  wild fires.

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On-going research is attempting to quantify
fires contribution to organic aerosols
Organic Carbon contribution to total extinction
Elemental Carbon contribution to total
extinction
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BlueSky and The Community Smoke Emission Model
(CSEM)

• Two efforts are underway to Develop Emissions
  Models for Wildland Burning
• BlueSky
• Designed to provide real-time estimation of fire
  emissions for use in a variety of modeling
  systems CALPUFF, Hy-Split, CMAQ
• CSEM
• Designed to provide historical fire emissions
  estimates for use in CMAQ and REMSAD
• Both systems rely upon the Emission Production
  Model (EPM) and Fuel Consumption Model (CONSUME)
  used throughout the fire community.

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System Synergy

• The BlueSky and CSEM Systems Complement Eachother
• BlueSky
• is an example of where the Fire Community wants
  to BE.
• but we can only be there in the Pacific Northwest
  because of the unique combination of Agencies,
  and Reporting and Modeling tools.
• CSEM
• is necessary for integrating Fire into CMAQ.
• is necessary for historical/scenario simulations.
• will be invaluable to getting BlueSky operational
  in other parts of the country where resources
  similar to the Pacific Northwest do not exist.

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Steps Common to Smoke Emission Modeling

• Read Fire Description Information
• Determine the Fuel Loading
• Obtain Local Meteorological Data
• Calculate Fuel Consumption (CONSUME)
• Calculate CO, CO2, CH4, PM, PM2.5, PM10, and Heat
  Released (EPM)
• Calculate Plume Rise for each Fire.
• Integrate Fire Emissions into the Modeling System.

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What we CSEM is trying to do

• Goal to build a tool to generate emissions from
  forest burning for use in regional air quality
  modeling with the following characteristics
• Scale is regional to national with resolution
  ranging from 1 km to 36 km
• Temporal resolution from hourly to multi-year
• Chemical species including all NAAQS visibility
  components their precursors
• Accuracy equivalent to other emissions estimates.

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Identify vegetation cover fuel loadings (1 km
resolution) Read from NFDR fuel model coverage
Modify with National FCC coverage
CSEM
MM5 Meteorology 2pm local time Temperature
Relative humidity Cloud cover Wind
speed Daily Temperature range Relative humidity
range Past 7 days Precipitation Same as above
Generate species Emissions Plume Rise (hourly,
regional model resolution) Develop emissions
profiles to scale species from EPM generated
emissions to generate hourly emissions
distributions. Estimate plume rise based on
Briggs at appropriate resolution for the spatial
scale of emissions.
Calculate Fuel Moisture Content (daily, weekly,
regional model resolution)   NFDR calculations
based on MM5 input for range of variables at 36
km resolution
Calculate Fuel Consumption (daily, regional model
resolution) Utilize CONSUME to generate fuel
consumption and EPM to estimate emissions heat
release rate for each fire.
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CSEM Approach

• Identify fire boundaries
• Identify vegetation fuels involved
• Calculate fuel moisture content
• Calculate fuel consumption
• Calculate fire emissions
• Speciate fire emissions calculate plume rise.

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Identify fire boundaries

• Time, location, size of fires determined from
  National Fire Occurrence Database (Hardy, et.al.
  Missoula Fire Lab.)
• Federal most State fires, from 1986-1996, at
  1km resolution in a daily GIS database .

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Identify vegetation fuels

• Identify NFDR fuel model at 1 km resolution from
  Bergen, et.al., 1998
• Modify fuel loading, if necessary, using fuel
  National Current Condition Class coverage
  (Hardy, et.al. Missoula Fire Lab.)

Identify vegetation cover fuel loadings (1 km
resolution) Read from NFDR fuel model coverage
Modify with National FCC coverage
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Calculate Fuel Moisture Content

• Use NFDR equations based on data from MM5
  including daily temperature RH range, wind
  speed, cloud cover, precip.
• Drought indices from MM5
• Resolution from MM5

Calculate Fuel Moisture Content (daily, weekly,
regional model resolution)   NFDR calculations
based on MM5 input for range of variables at 36
km resolution
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Calculate Fuel and Emissions

• Use CONSUME with NFDR model estimates of fuel
  loading moisture content.
• Use EPM to generate PM10, PM2.5, CO heat
  release rate.

Calculate Fuel Consumption (daily, regional model
resolution) Utilize CONSUME to generate fuel
consumption and EPM to estimate emissions heat
release rate for each fire.
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Speciate Emissions and Calculate Plume Rise

• Develop emissions profiles from ratios of species
  to calculated CO emissions from current research
  results.
• Calculate plume rise using Briggs per SASEM

Generate species Emissions Plume Rise (hourly,
regional model resolution) Develop emissions
profiles to scale species from EPM generated
emissions to generate hourly emissions
distributions. Estimate plume rise based on
Briggs at appropriate resolution for the spatial
scale of emissions.
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Emissions Speciation
CE CO2 / COCO2CH4Cother MCE 0.15.86CE
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BlueSky Smoke Modeling Framework

• Local and Regional applications
• Real-time predictions
• Automated, centralized processing
• Emission tracking
• Predicted of surface concentrations
• Quantitative verification
• Community model development
• Web-access control and output products

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BlueSky Basic Elements
Source
Characteristics
Weather
Emissions
Dispersion
Output
Products
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BlueSkyRAINS

• EPA Rapid Access INformation System (RAINS)
• Overlay Data
• Static Data - Sensitive Receptors, Geo-Political
  Boundaries
• Transitory Data - Meteorological Data,
  Trajectories, Smoke Dispersion
• Orthogonality of Design - Time, Space, Data
• Ability to Drill-In to the Data - Burn Reports,
  Time Series
• Turn Fires on and off
• Obtain Fire Contribution Information at Receptors

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The BlueSkyRAINS System
MM5
FASTRACS
CALMM5/CALMET
MM52ARL
EPM/CONSUME v1.02
CALMET2netCDF
CALPUFF
EPM2BAEM
HYSPLIT
CALPUFF2netCDF
PAVE Animations
CALPUFF/ArcIMS Linkage (netCDF2SHP (?))
Preliminary BlueSky web page
BlueSky Linux System
Time Series Display
Burn Report Display
ArcIMS (SDE, SQLserver)
TRAJREAD
BlueSkyRAINS Windows System
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http//www.BlueSkyRAINS.org
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BlueSkyRAINSHysplit forward trajectories
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BlueSky Predicted Surface Concentrations
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BlueSky Predicted Surface Concentrations
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USFS/Fire Consortia for Advanced Modeling of
Smoke and Meteorology (FireCAMMS)
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Comparison of CSEM and BlueSky Preliminary Results

• Comparative data inputs from 2002 Oregon fire
  (actual vs. 1996 met)
• 
  BlueSky CSEM
• Area of Burnsite acre
  500 500
• 0 - 0.25 inch fuel tons/acre
  1.0 2.9
• 0.25 - 1 inch fuel tons/acre
  2.2 2.3
• 1 - 3 inch fuel tons/acre
  1.6 5.6
• 3 - 9 inch fuel tons/acre
  5.4 13.2
• 9 - 20 inch fuel tons/acre
  24.6 0
• 20 inch fuel tons/acre
  0.1 0
• Duff
  8.0
  2.5
• Burn-site slope percent
  50 50
• Ignition time HHMM
  1400 1400
• 10-hr fuel moisture
  9 13.5
• Surface wind speed (mph)
  6 5.5

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Comparison of CSEM and BlueSky Preliminary Results
Heat Released
PM10
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Summary

• Two efforts are underway to Develop Emissions
  Models for Wildland Burning
• BlueSky - Uses available Burn Reporting Systems
• CSEM - Fire Occurrence Database, NFDRS
• Both systems rely upon the Emission Production
  Model (EPM) and Fuel Consumption Model (CONSUME)
  and produce similar results.
• The BlueSky and CSEM Systems Complement Eachother
• BlueSky is an example of where the Fire Community
  wants to BE.
• CSEM is necessary for integrating Fire into CMAQ.