WIRC Fire Modeling Group

The Wildfire Interdisciplinary Reserch Center fire modeling group led by Dr. Kochanski is dedicated to advancing our understanding of how wildfires create their own weather and impact air quality. The overarching goal of the WIRC modeling group is to improve current fire, smoke and weather forecasting capabilities by building new coupled fire-atmosphere models accounting for the fire impacts on local weather conditions and air quality. 

WIRC Fire Modeling with WRF-SFIREWe develop and run state-of-the-art forecasting and data assimilation systems based on the coupled fire-atmosphere model (WRF-SFIRE) to conduct numerical experiments and provide operational support for current wildfires and lay ground for future weather, fire spread and air quality models.

We feed supercomputers with weather data, satellite fire observations, airborne infrared fire perimeters, and fuel moisture to forecast future fire risk, fire progression, and smoke dispersion. We are a part of the Open Wildfire Modeling Group, gathering developers of open source wildfire models helping solve local and global wildfire problems.

WRF-SFIRE simulation of Creek Fire 2020We believe that using state-of-the-art fire models should be easy. We work easy to use web-based solutions assisting in wildfire forecasting and prescribed burns. Numerical forecasts initiated from a web controller, are executed on a supercomputer, and uploaded to a webserver where they are accessible from any device with an internet connection and a browser.

Meet the WIRC Fire Modeling Team:

Caldor fire WRF-SFIRE forecast.

Adam Kochanski

Angel Farguell

Chase Porter

Jack Drucker

Kathleen Clough

Jeremy Benik