JIMO Researchers Contribute Significant Advances to Fire Danger Rating System

Researchers at the Joint Institute for Marine Observation (JIMO) at the University of California-San Diego’s (UCSD) Scripps Institution of Oceanography Experimental Climate Prediction Center (ECPC) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) are making experimental forecasts of the national fire danger rating system that guides fire management. The National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS), and the forecasting indices that it produces, are widely used by land management agencies in the United States for fire management applications such as prevention and pre-suppression planning. When an index reaches a designated level, for example, management actions such as forest closure and additional prevention measures may be initiated. The research team, led by Dr. John Roads at ECPC and Dr. Henry Juang at NCEP, have made some recent notable advances. First, the team has analyzed forecast data for the past 25 years to understand why and where forecasts may be useful. Second, they are now issuing on an experimental basis seven-month ensemble regional forecasts of potential fire danger; the current NFRDS projections of potential fire danger are limited to “nowcasts,” short-term forecasts that cover only one or two days. Dr. Roads will elaborate on these developments at the upcoming Seventh Symposium on Fire and Forest Meteorology, to be held in Bar Harbor, Maine in October.

Background: ECPC previously suggested, in a pilot experiment, that NFDRS indices could be forecast with its Global to Regional Spectral Model (G-RSM). The RSM was originally developed at NCEP to provide regional details for its Global Spectral Model (GSM). A growing number of users have begun to use the RSM to simulate and forecast regional climate details that cannot be achieved with coarser-scale global models.

Significance: Predicting the influence of weather on fire ignition and spread at monthly to seasonal time scales is an operational requirement for national fire planning by the National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC), which is the US support center for wildland firefighting. This is officially done by considering standard NCEP Climate Prediction Center (CPC) seasonal forecast products of temperature and precipitation along with other indicators, including human judgment. By contrast, automatic nowcasts of the NFDRS have been carried out for many years at individual station locations. These experiments are showing that the NFDRS can now be skillfully predicted with NCEP and ECPC G-RSM forecasts and are a routine experimental contribution to NICC. This research supports NOAA Mission Goal 2: Understand Climate Variability and Change to Enhance Society’s Ability to Plan and Respond.