Coupled Weather and Wildfire Behavior Modeling at Los Alamos [electronic resource] : An Overview.
Over the past two years, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have been engaged in coupled weather/wildfire modeling as part of a broader initiative to predict the unfolding of crisis events. Wildfire prediction was chosen for the following reasons: (1) few physics-based wild-fire pr...
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Online Access |
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| Format: | Government Document Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Washington, D.C. : Oak Ridge, Tenn. :
United States. Dept. of Energy. Office of the Assistant Secretary, Management and Administration ; distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy,
1997.
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| Summary: | Over the past two years, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have been engaged in coupled weather/wildfire modeling as part of a broader initiative to predict the unfolding of crisis events. Wildfire prediction was chosen for the following reasons: (1) few physics-based wild-fire prediction models presently exist; (2) LANL has expertise in the fields required to develop such a capability; and (3) the development of this predictive capability would be enhanced by LANL̀s strength in high performance computing. Wildfire behavior models have historically been used to predict fire spread and heat release for a prescribed set of fuel, slope, and wind conditions (Andrews 1986). In the vicinity of a fire, however, atmospheric conditions are constantly changing due to non-local weather influences and the intense heat of the fire itself. This non- linear process underscores the need for physics-based models that treat the atmosphere-fire feedback. Actual wildfire prediction with full-physics models is both time-critical and computationally demanding, since it must include regional- to local-scale weather forecasting together with the capability to accurately simulate both intense gradients across a fireline, and atmosphere/fire/fuel interactions. Los Alamos has recently (January 1997) acquired a number of SGI/Cray Origin 2000 machines, each presently having 32 to 64 processors. These high performance computing systems are part of the Department of Energỳs Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). While offering impressive performance now, upgrades to the system promise to deliver over 1 Teraflop (10(12) floating point operations per second) at peak performance before the turn of the century. |
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| Item Description: | Published through the Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information. 12/31/1997. "LA-UR--97-4073" "CONF-980121--" "DE98002669" 78. American Meteorological Society annual meeting, Phoenix, AZ (United States), 11-16 Jan 1998. White, Andrew B.; Bossert, James E.; Reisner, Jon M.; Harlow, Francis H.; Linn, Rodman R.; Winterkamp, Judith L. |
| Physical Description: | 8 p. |