Open-Source Fire Science
Open-Source Fire Science
Coen, J. L. and P. J. Riggan, 2014: Simulation and thermal imaging of the 2006 Esperanza wildfire in southern California: Application of a coupled weather-wildland fire model. International Journal of Wildland Fire 23, 755-770.
The Esperanza fire was ignited on the upwind edge of the San Jacinto mountains during dry, windy Santa Ana conditions. The following simulations show the winds near the surface and fire growth. This work was the first to simulate simultaneously the evolving meteorological flow, fire behavior, and fire-induced flow for a landscape-scale naturally evolving fire. It captures the rapid spread of the fire to the west-southwest driven by both Santa Ana winds and topographic effects, recreating the splitting of the fire, feathering at the leading edge, and other distinctive features. For infrared imagery of this fire from research aircraft, see http://fireimaging.com/. The simulation was visualized using VAPOR producing the animations below.
View: towards the south. Cabazon, CA, is in the foreground. Each frame is a minute apart, the total animation covers the local time from 1:30 am 10/26/06 till 8 PM. The misty field represents smoke, colored by concentration – higher concentrations are more opaque (linearly with concentration) and darker. The colors identifying the burning parts of the fire are inspired by the radiant temperature color bar at fireimaging.com – brighter colors like yellow reflect higher surface fire sensible heat fluxes (see color bar to right). Darker browns are lower fluxes. The surface appears dark brown where fire has passed. The boxiness to the fireline shows the atmospheric grid sizes, onto which the fire fluxes on the fire fuel cell scale (5×5 within each atmos cell) have been summed.