Screen grab from a BlueSky animation.
The U.S. Forest Service has developed a system called BlueSky Modeling Framework using multiple models that when combined in various configurations can enable:
- the lookup of fuels information from fuel maps
- the calculation of total and hourly fire consumption based on fuel loadings and weather information
- the calculation of speciated emissions (such as CO2 or PM2.5) from a fire
- the calculation of vertical plume profiles produced by a fire
- the calculation of likely trajectories of smoke parcels given off by a fire
- the calculation of downstream smoke concentrations.
The image above is a screen grab from a Beta website of an animation of a 3-hour running average of PM 2.5 using modeled fires. (Don’t ask me to explain it any further than that!)
More information about the system is HERE. You can configure your own animation at THIS SITE.