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NOAA experts play a vital role in efforts to combat wildfires that rage across the United States each year. NOAA National Weather Service meteorologists provide site-specific forecasting for wildfires of all sizes—from half an acre to many thousand acres. NOAA satellite experts provide a lifesaving bird’s eye view of the devastating blazes. NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce. Once a fire starts, up-to-date weather information becomes especially critical. Weather and fuels are key ingredients in fire behavior. Accurate forecasts of wind direction and speed strongly influence fire strategy and help incident commanders make the best possible decisions to control wildfires. The forecasters are specially trained in mesoscale and microscale meteorology and employ a variety of special tools to prepare the forecast that contributes to the safety of all personnel involved in the management of fires. Routine fire weather forecasts are issued every day during the fire season with special site-specific forecasts prepared on demand. Since 1914, NWS meteorologists have worked closely with fire behavior analysts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management, and other federal, state and local fire control agencies who are responsible for suppressing fires. In The NWS
Storm Prediction Center In The NWS
Forecast Office Offices near active fires sometimes give weather briefings to the operational fire management team. These briefings help to plan where to place crews and how to fight the fire. Forecasters draw upon various sources of meteorological information such as computer-produced weather models, local weather observations, and more. The local NWS office also provides specific meteorological information support to NWS’ special cadre of Incident Meteorologists, also known as “IMETs”, who may be deployed to a fire location. At the Fire Key NOAA Fire
Weather Tools These IMETS can deploy rapidly with the ATMU to provide critical fire weather forecasting support. The forecaster sets up the portable unit near the fire command centers and provides critical information that helps managers decide where to move fire crews, learn about incoming weather, etc. Forecasters use laptop computers to access information from local NWS field offices. They can receive the latest information about surface and upper air observations, as well as Doppler weather radar and weather satellite data to make specialized forecasts. Every year, IMETS are deployed to support hundreds of fires nationwide. Forecasters help the on-scene fire management teams to obtain and interpret weather information, train fire personnel on how weather may affect their operations during critical fire situations, and ensure the safety of fire fighters. Using NOAA satellites, fire-weather forecasters and other emergency workers throughout the Western Hemisphere can rapidly detect and monitor forest fires. The geostationary Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm or ABBA—the most complex satellite fire detection method available—allows for early detection of rapidly growing fires, especially in remote areas, and half-hourly monitoring to indicate if the fire is intensifying or not. The technique, used by NOAA's NWS Storm Prediction Center, automatically detects wildfires in environmental satellite imagery using information from NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, or GOES, orbiting some 23,000 miles above the equator. ABBA uses NOAA's geostationary satellites to detect and monitor forest fires every half-hour. NOAA's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., combines the images taken from the two GOES every half hour, for a total of 96 images in 24 hours, and produces one new image. This single image shows all wildfires detected at a 4-kilometer resolution. This imagery data helps forecasters know where the wildfires are located even in open country where there are no visible large smoke plumes or people. In addition, the SPC meteorologists can overlay geographic information and zoom in on particular "hot spots" that are detected. This information can then be combined with other weather data to produce daily fire weather forecasts. This Internet-based
product is available to firefighters and the general public in near real-time.
Animations of fire product imagery for the past 24 hours are available
online at http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/burn/wfabba.html. Updated July 2002 |