Community Helps with Wildfire Forecasts

The summer of 2018 brought various local wildfires that burned throughout Utah, with a few large ones in the mountains of Utah County. Researchers such as Derek Mallia, Logan Mitchell, Kerry Kelly of Chemical Engineering and others have been evaluating smoke forecasts for wildfires such as the ones in 2018. Sensors such as the ones found on UTA TRAX trains and many other air quality sensors hosted by community members were vital in improving the resolution of measurements of smoke and pollution transport.

Check out the news release from @theU here: https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/community-helps-scientists-evaluate-wildfire-smoke-forecasts/.

This study was also featured in EurekaAlert, which can be found here: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/uou-chs111720.php.

For the full study, go to https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020JD032712.

A very recent example of this comes from the extreme fires of 2020 in Colorado and California. Mallia, Kelly, Mitchell, and Steve Krueger have all been involved with evaluating models in real time. To learn more about these efforts this year, go to https://www2.cisl.ucar.edu/news/cheyenne-supports-active-wildfire-research-fires-burn.