Identification

Title

Modeling wildland fires : A description of the Coupled Atmosphere-Wildland Fire Environment model (CAWFE)

Abstract

This work describes the Coupled Atmosphere Wildland Fire Environment (CAWFE) model, which is used to simulate wildland fires. CAWFE is comprised of a numerical weather prediction model and a fire behavior module, two-way coupled such that atmospheric conditions, along with fuel properties and terrain slope, determine how fast and in what direction a fire spreads. The heat released by the fire in turn affects the wind in its vicinity, notably producing fire winds. The atmospheric model is a nonhydrostatic numerical weather prediction model designed to work at high resolutions (hundreds of meters) in complex terrain. At the surface, each atmospheric grid cell is further divided into two-dimensional fuel cells. The fire module represents a surface fire and a crown fire traveling through tree canopies. It is comprised of a tracer method for defining and tracking a subgrid-scale interface and a combination of empirical, semi-empirical, and other methods for representing processes such as the rate of spread of the flaming front, post-frontal heat release, calculation of sensible and latent heat fluxes released by the fire, crown fire ignition and heat release, smoke production, and the upscaling and reintroduction of heat fluxes into the atmospheric model. We describe the input data and experiment design, and describe the model output and visualization of the atmospheric dynamics, fire behavior, and smoke.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ng4q2z

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Keyword set

keyword value

EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS > FIRE ECOLOGY > FIRE MODELS

EARTH SCIENCE > HUMAN DIMENSIONS > NATURAL HAZARDS > WILDFIRES

originating controlled vocabulary

title

U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Global Change Master Directory

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2021-09-17

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2013-02-04T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2023-08-18T18:07:07.124923

Metadata language

eng; USA