EC-05. Wildfire Observations by Airborne and Truck-based Mobile Doppler Lidars during the California Fire Dynamics Experiment (CalFiDE)

Abstract
Wildfires and their threat to first responders, the general public, and ecology have increased over the last decade. This has led to an increased need for fire-related products and forecasts, with observations being essential as “ground truth” for product development. New observations of fire behavior and dynamics such as fire-generated winds, plume rise processes, and topographical effects are important to advancing model performance. However, three-dimensional profiling of wind fields is particularly challenging around wildfires, especially in complex mountainous terrain where wildfires often occur. The California Fire Dynamics Experiment (CalFiDE) from 26 August to 26 September 2022 was designed to target this challenge with two state-of-the-art mobile Doppler lidars on airborne and mobile ground-based platforms supported by additional remote sensing and in-situ instrumentation to couple atmospheric dynamics to fire behavior. This presentation will focus on the mobile Doppler lidars including the novel deployment strategies and a preliminary analysis of data from the immediate area of wildland fires. Observed features include updraft and plume characteristics, fire-affected winds such as inflow strength and extent, entrainment processes and finer scale dynamics embedded in wildfire plumes, and other non-linear fire-atmospheric dynamics. The aircraft also hosted high-resolution multispectral imaging to map out the fire and couple evolving fire behavior to the observed wind fields.