Lidar Instrumentation for the California Fire Dynamics Study Chapter uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • The California Fire Dynamics Study (CalFiDE) is a collaborative effort between the Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL) at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC) at San Jose State University (SJSU) and the University of Nevada Reno (UNR), to investigate wildfire dynamics in Northern California in late Summer and Fall 2022. Further information on the instrumentation and scope of this study can be found in the Valero et al. short paper. During CalFiDE, the contributing organizations plan to deploy four Doppler lidar systems in addition to infrared imaging and chemical measurements to quantify the fire dynamics and atmospheric coupling of large scale wildfires. These systems will be installed on a range of mobile platforms including; a Twin Otter aircraft, pickup trucks, and trailers. The mobile ground based installations allow researchers to rapidly deploy the systems to areas of interest during the study, while the aircraft installation will cover a larger range of spatial scales. Systems will operate in scanning modes to quantify 3D winds, vertical stares to resolve fine scale vertical velocities, and coordinated scans where the measurement volumes of nearby systems are overlapped to provide high resolution measurements of 3D winds. The coordinated scanning technique will be used to target fine scale features within fire plumes such as helical updrafts, counter-rotating vortices, and inflow/outflow dynamics. Collectively these lidar observations will provide validation data sets for simulated fire-generated winds.

publication date

  • January 1, 2022

Date in CU Experts

  • June 18, 2025 3:51 AM

Full Author List

  • Makowiecki A; Strobach E; Baidar S; Lareau N; Clementsu C; Brewer WA

author count

  • 6

Other Profiles

International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 13

  • 9789892622972

Additional Document Info

start page

  • 294

end page

  • 297