Atmospheric and Anthropogenic Factors

Responsible For FOREST FIRE

Dr. Ajay Gairola

Professor in Civil Engineering
Professor In-Charge Wind Simulation Laboratory
Former Head Center of Excellence in Disaster Mitigation & Management
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (India)
E-mail: garryfce@gmail.com
ATMOSPHERIC STRUCTURE
INTERACTION B/W FOREST FIRE AND CLIMATE

Burning a Single Square Mile of Tropical Forest releases as much carbon dioxide
to the atmosphere as driving the passenger vehicle for 369 million miles—the
distance to the sun and back, twice.
(Source: Ciais et al., 2013)
FOREST – FIRE FUEL
 MAJOR DRIVERS
 Climate is a key driver of forest fires - Records from the past and present provide strong evidence that
warmer temperatures are associated with spikes in fire activity.
 Emissions of Greenhouse gases (Greenhouse Effect) are causing the global temperature to increase and
the climate to change. This enhances the likelihood of wildfires.
 A warmer climate also leads to earlier snowmelt, which causes soils to be drier for longer. And dry soils
become more susceptible to fire.
 Drier conditions and higher temperatures increase not only the likelihood of a wildfire to occur, but also the
duration and the severity of the wildfire.
 The areas where wildfires are taking place are always areas that have become drier and hotter, and where
spring has come earlier.
 Wildfires are typically either started accidentally by natural causes like lightning or by anthropogenic
activities.
 Human-caused climate change is now a key driver of forest fire activity.
 Scientific studies suggested that climate change has been increasing the length of the fire season, the size
of the area burned each year and the number of wildfires.
 Fire Behavior: The Wildland Fire Environment

Weather Topography
FIRE
Fuels
Weather Topography Fuels

Temperature Aspect Fuel Loading

Precipitation Elevation Compactness
Relative Humidity Shape of Country Size and Shape
Atmospheric Stability Position on Slope Chemical Content
Wind speed and Direction Steepness of Slope Vertical Continuity
Horizontal Continuity
Effects of Topography on Fire Behavior
Forest Fires in India – Historic Records

REGULAR FIRE AFFECTED AREAS

 WILDFIRES ON GLOBAL SCALE
Currently wildland fires affect three to 4 million km2 of the global land surface every year, which equates to over
3% of the Earth’s vegetated land surface.

(Source: Flannigan et al., 2009)

 GLOBALLY AVERAGE ANNUAL BURNED AREA

 In 118 countries (having 65 percent of world forest cover) 19.8 million hectare of forest is affected by fire annually
(> 1 million hectares of forest burnt annually)
 The largest areas of forest affected by fire -
1) Africa 2) Australia 3) United States of America 4) India 5) Canada
 94 percent of the total forest area affected by fire was due to wildfires and only 6 percent due to planned fires.
WILDFIRE DISASTERS (1980-2008) AND FATALITIES CAUSED
IMPACT OF FOREST FIRE ON ECO-SYSTEM
 Contribution of Forest Fire Emissions to Atmospheric Pollution

• Although fuel loads were high in forests, globally the role of forest fires was relatively modest; about 15%
of Total Carbon Emissions was due to the burning of forests.
• According to the CORINAIR-1990 inventory, forest fires contribute 0.2% to the emissions of NO2, 0.5% to
the emissions of nonmethane volatile organic compounds, 0.2% to the emissions of CH4, 1.9% to the
emissions of CO, 1.2% to the emissions N2O, and 0.1% to the emissions of NH.
 FOREST SERVICE BUDGET
Wildland firefighting now consumes more than half of the
Forest Service’s Annual budget
FOREST MANAGEMENT
 Forest management is essential to maintain a healthy,
productive forest for commercial, recreational, and
ecological reasons.
 In the context of global warming, forest management gains
additional importance because a well-managed, vigorously
growing forest will sequester carbon more efficiently than a
poorly managed stand.
 A warmer climate also leads to earlier snowmelt, which
causes soils to be drier for longer. And dry soils become
more susceptible to fire.
 Efficient forest management can be a part of the solution to
the developing global-warming scenario, particularly the
prompt regeneration of harvested areas, either through
planting or by natural means, and the reduction of losses of
stands to wildfire, insects and disease.
 Extensive commercial harvesting of trees and the loss of
trees from other causes in the developed and developing
countries, have not always been followed by adequate
replanting of stock.
FIRE AND WIND DYNAMICS
 3-STAGES OF FIRE DEVELOPMENT
• The first stage is the surface stage, a period when the fire is low and it
interacts only with air in the surface layer. As a result, surface layer winds
drive fire spread and surface air dryness controls the drying of fuels.

• The second stage is the deepening or mixing stage. The fire's energy
release has enabled air to rise out of the surface layer, and as such the
fire-induced circulation can tap into the entire mixing layer. The plume will
rise freely as the fire-heated air ascends in the adiabatic environment. The
top of the plume rises during this stage, faster than at any other time in
the fire's life cycle.

The third stage of development is the penetration stage, when convection has
reached the top of the mixing layer and is pushing or digging into the stable
layer/free atmosphere. The rate of vertical growth drops significantly, and there is
lateral plume growth due to this vertical convergence. The strength of the stable
layer is important in determining how much higher the plume rises, and the strength
of the circulation caused by the fire below.
 DYNAMICS OF DEEPENING STAGE
Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) - Energy released or absorbed when a parcel rises
from the surface to a level z.
dz < 0 here so that, when d(z) < O(z’) (i.e. the
descending air is colder than its environment),
DE > 0 as one would expect. When z is the
mixing height, DE and CAPE are equal in
magnitude and opposite in sign

Here, g is the acceleration due to gravity and T is potential temperature. In the idealized atmosphere, CAPE
reaches its maximum value at the mixing height and decreases with increasing height thereafter.

Assuming the circulation is somewhat like a storm-convective cell, the descent will take place over a
broader region, be slower than the rising air, and may take place several kilometers from the updraft. This
descending air will either release energy (if the atmosphere was unstable to begin with) or require energy to
push it down (if the atmosphere was stable.) This energy is analogous to CAPE, but to avoid confusion I will
call it descent energy.
DE: Same equation as CAPE with only limits from z-0 (from top of mixing layer to surface)
 INSIGHT INTO CAPE AND DE
CAPE is the most direct measure of how stability and the atmosphere's profile will influence a fire.

DE gauges how much of the CAPE will be consumed (or bow much more energy will be added to
it) in the necessary return flow.

The difficulty of exchanging a parcel between the surface and height z is the sum of CAPE and DE,
and I will call this the parcel exchange potential energy, PEPE:

PEPE(z) reflects the ease of forming a convective

circulation of depth z. Note that PEPE is zero at the mixing
height.
 WIND DYNAMICS
The incompressible version of the continuity equation The steeper the near-surface vertical CAPE
in two dimensions is - gradient is, the greater the speed of the surface
wind that fans the flames and dries the fuels.

If all of the potential energy released by a rising parcel The surface wind speed near the fire, then, will be
manifests as kinetic energy, then the vertical velocity, proportional to the vertical CAPE gradient and the
w, is proportional to the square root of CAPE. fire width, and inversely proportional to the
(Because the focus here is on the updraft alone and magnitude of the CAPE
just above the fire, I consider CAPE rather than
PEPE.) Ignoring constants, the vertical derivative of
kt. is then
 WIND DYNAMICS
 If a left-to-right (positive x) wind is added to Fig. , the left side inflow is strengthened while the right side
inflow diminishes.
 It is the left side, or upwind, circulation that drives the fire, while the downwind circulation primarily dries
fuels. (The downwind circulation may also bear strongly on the safety of firefighters in the area.
 If it does, it is likely to be through small-scale turbulence, on a spatial and temporal scale below what I
consider here.) I will focus on the upwind circulation hereafter.
 THERMODYNAMICS OF ATMOSPHERE-FIRE INTERACTION
• If a fire adds energy GE to an air parcel, it effectively shifts the CAPE and PEPE curves in Fig. 3 to the right.
This raises the mixing height for that parcel by an amount equal to -

• For a given energy input then, -(~PEPE/~z)' indicates how easily a fire's circulation can penetrate above the
mixing height. This will be reflected in the penetration stage, as the fire's convection pushes into the free
atmosphere.
• When convection reaches mixing level, all potential energy available to the circulation from instability has
been released; any further deepening requires work for the ascending branch, the descending branch, or
both.

• This is the point when the fire enters the penetration stage. The circulation is deepening, and the updraft air
is still rising, but both begin to slow. If there is no entrainment, rising air will eventually stop and sink back
towards the mixing height.
• The flatter the PEPE(z) curve is at the mixing height, the more stable the atmosphere is and the more kinetic
energy a parcel loses (as work done) with a given increase in height.
FIRE THUNDERSTROM AND BUILDING FIRE