Airborne and Lidar measurements of smoke plume rise, emissions, and dispersion

This data publication consists of measurements of smoke plume rise, emissions, and dispersion in and around eight wildfires in the western United States and prescribed fires in California, Idaho, and North Carolina. Eleven wildland fires were investigated between August 2009 and August 2011, allowing the research team to measure plume rise and smoke transport over a wide range of meteorological conditions, fire activity, fuels, and terrain. This data publication provides observations for the evaluation of smoke dispersion and air quality forecasting models. The data publication includes measurements of prognostic variables (plume height and the concentrations of aerosol, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane) of plume rise models, smoke dispersion models, and atmospheric chemistry transport models. The subcomponent models of smoke modeling systems, such as plume rise and fire effects models rely on a variety of fire environment data as input including ambient meteorological conditions, fuel type, fuel loading, and fuel condition. In addition to measuring model prognostic variables, this data publication also has ancillary data consisting of fire environment variables which are input for the subcomponent models of smoke modeling systems.
Air quality regulators, land managers, and atmospheric scientists all rely on smoke emission and atmospheric chemistry modeling systems to predict, evaluate, and manage the impact of fire emissions on air quality and atmospheric composition. There is an urgent need to quantitatively characterize the uncertainties, biases, and application limits of smoke modeling systems and to develop improved systems for air regulators, land managers, and air quality forecasters. Accurately describing and predicting the dynamics of smoke plumes and subsequent smoke transport is a major uncertainty in determining the impact of fire emissions on air quality. This dataset provides measurements for the evaluation and development of smoke modeling systems.
The measurements provided in this data publication were collected in the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) research project "Validation of Smoke Transport Models with Airborne and Lidar Experiments" (Project # 08-1-6-09), and collected in part to support the Smoke Emissions Model Intercomparison Project (SEMIP; https://www.airfire.org/projects/semip/, Joint Fire Science Program Project #08-1-7-10). The research project responded to research solicitation JFSP AFP-2008-1, Task 6 "Smoke and Emissions Models Evaluation". Original metadata date was 08/12/2013. Minor metadata updates were made on 11/18/2013, 12/15/2016, and 06/11/2024.