Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
wildfires, and agricultural fires. The BlueSky smoke modeling framework has
recently been upgraded in several key ways: satellite data are now incorporated to
provide information on the location and size of fires; the most recent fuel loading,
fuel consumption, and emission models have been added; and a photochemical
grid model is used to predict concentration fields of PM
2.5
and ozone nationally
from both fire and anthropogenic emissions.
2. Components of the BlueSky Gateway Modeling System
The BlueSky Gateway Modeling System consists of five component systems, each
of which is described below.
SMARTFIRE -
The
Satellite Mapping Automated Reanalysis Tool for Fire
Incident Reconciliation (Sullivan et al., 2008) combines satellite fire data from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hazard Mapping
System (HMS) (Ruminski et al., 2006) and ground-based reports into a unified
geographic information system (GIS) database. SMARTFIRE then compiles a
database of fire location information for use in retrospective analyses and provides
fire location input to the BlueSky Framework.
BlueSky Framework -
The BlueSky Framework (BSF) (Larkin et al., 2008)
version 3.0 is a “modeling framework” that enables use of state-of-the-science
models to simulate smoke impact, air quality, and emissions from fires. The BSF
was developed by the U.S. Forest Service AirFIRE Team at the Pacific Northwest
Research Station and re-engineered by Sonoma Technology, Inc. (STI) and the
Air FIRE Team to provide real-time fire emissions estimates. These estimates are
produced using Fuel Characterization Classification System (FCCS) fuel loading,
the CONSUME 3.0 consumption, and the Fire Emission Production Simulator
(FEPS) emissions models.
MM5 -
The Pennsylvania State University/NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5)
(Grell et al., 1994) version 3.7 is applied on a national domain with 36-km
horizontal grid spacing and 29 vertical layers. Initial and boundary conditions are
derived from the North American Mesoscale (NAM) model's 40-km analyses and
forecasts. The Meteorology-Chemistry interface Processor (MCIP) version 3.1 is
used to prepare MM5 data for the emissions and air quality model.
SMOKE -
The Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) modeling
system (Houyoux et al., 2000) version 2.3 is used to merge fire emissions from the
BlueSky Framework with non-fire emissions. Non-fire emissions are derived from
the 2002 NEI version 3 projected to the current year using EGAS version 4.0 (U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, 2004a). MM5 temperature predictions are used
in the on-road (MOBILE6) (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2005) and
