Portugal Forest Fires (Oct2017 & Aug2022)
Portuguese territory is prone to wildfires, and in recent years, there has been a strong investment by local authorities in building expertise in fire-related sciences to better support decision-making, prevention, and mitigation of these phenomena. Two catastrophic wildfire cases over mainland Portugal, where complex topography played a role, occurred in Autumn 2017 and Summer 2022, with significant impacts on human lives and property. These cases were chosen to test the potential of hectometric simulations in achieving better monitoring of large forest fires:
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8-18 August 2022
The reference runs were performed using CY43T2_bf11 of AROME Dynamical Adaptation from ARPEGE , at 2.5km resolution with 60 vertical Levels.
We then used DEODE (OD-DT), v0.4.0, to run at a higher resolution of 500m with 90 vertical levels using CY48T3 of AROME from IAL package, using IFS-HRES as coupling model. In both experiments no DA was applied.
Both models were run on ECMWF ATOS machine.
The reference runs with AROME CY43T2 at 2.5 km resolution used the operational domain spanning most of the Iberian Peninsula delimited by the 44.79ºN and 34.01ºN parallels and by the 12.79ºW and 1.21ºW meridians (orange small-circles area on the panel below).
The DEODE runs were performed on a smaller domain focusing on a square region around mainland Portugal centered at latitude 39ºN and longitude 8.5ºW with an area of 1500x1500 square cells of 500x500m, roughly delimited by the 42.79ºN and 35.01ºN paralells and by the 12.79ºW and 4.21ºW meridians (blue small-circles area on the panel bellow).
The plot below shows the domains used in each experiment.
A higher resolution allows for a better description of the orography in the domain. For example, in mainland Portugal, the maximum geometrical height is about 250 m larger in the 500m resolution runs than in the 2.5km runs. The highest elevation in mainland Portugal, at 1993 meters, is located in Torre (Serra da Estrela).
The fires occurred mainly between the 15th and the 16th of October. In order to test the capabilities of DEODE, we performed 72h forecasts in cycles of 24h starting from 12/10/2017 at 00:00 and compared them with the 48h forecasts preformed with AROME at 2.5km resolution.
A Folder with the plots shown in this page, along with plots for the remaining time steps and movies, can be found in this link
https://github.com/pardallio/dcmdb/tree/develop/cases/portugal_2017
The fires occurred mainly between the 8th and the 18th of august 2022. In order to test the capabilities of DEODE, we performed 36h forecasts in cycles of 24h starting from 08/08/2022 at 00:00 and compared them with the 48h forecasts preformed with AROME at 2.5km resolution.
Deode data at 500m resolution is downsampled to 2.5 km for a fair comparison.
A Folder with the plots shown in this page, along with plots for the remaining time steps and movies, can be found in this link
An objective validation should take place, using as reference local conventional observations.
https://github.com/pardallio/dcmdb/tree/develop/cases/portugal_2022