Ponente
Descripción
2021 has been a very active year in North America for wildfires, especially in western and central Canada. More than 4 million hectares of forested land in Canada were burned as of September 2021, well above the average for the last 10 years. Over 40,000 people in several regions were evacuated from their homes, also above average, and dozens of residences were destroyed, notably in Lytton (British Columbia). Many densely populated urban centres downwind of fires, such as Edmonton (Alberta), Winnipeg (Manitoba), and Toronto (Ontario), experienced high PM2.5 concentrations and poor visibility conditions due to wildfire smoke.
Since 2016, Environment and Climate Change Canada’s FireWork numerical air quality modelling system has been providing operational forecast guidance on the air quality impacts of wildland fire events across North America. FireWork is a collaborative system that obtains near-real-time fire information from the Canadian Forest Service’s Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS) and Canadian Forest Fire Emissions Prediction System (CFFEPS). The FireWork system captured several extreme air quality episodes in summer 2021 caused by wildfire smoke.
In this presentation we will show analysis and evaluation of results for the FireWork air quality forecasts for summer 2021 and discuss upcoming changes to the operational system expected later this year. We will also show results from some preliminary research work on wildfire aerosol feedbacks on meteorology, particularly surface temperatures, in summer 2021.
