An Air Quality Modeling System Providing Smoke Impact Forecasts for Health Protection in Southeastern USA

Abstract

The HiRes-2 system, operational since 2015, provides daily forecasts of potential prescribed fire impacts on air quality. The system uses the WRF and CMAQ models for meteorology and air quality computations. A decision tree model predicts prescribed fire activity based on the weather forecast by analyzing historical burning patterns under similar meteorological conditions. Prescribed fire emissions are estimated using land-based but satellite-enhanced fuel load maps, consumption forecasts, and emission factors derived from laboratory and field measurements. The DDM-3D feature of CMAQ is used to calculate the impacts of prescribed fire emissions on pollutant concentrations. The expanded new system, HiRes-X, has many extensions for dynamic air quality and human exposure management. Daily forecasts of air quality and prescribed fire impacts are disseminated through an online interactive tool, which uses webGIS technologies to display the forecasting products in real time and retrospectively, along with relevant earth observation datasets. These datasets can be overlapped with geographical and population information to visualize the air pollution impacts on sensitive places and vulnerable communities.