Estimating Fire Radiative Power Using Weather Radar Products for Wildfires

By:
  • Saide, P. E.
  • Krishna, M.
  • Ye, X.
  • Thapa, L. H.
  • Turney, F.
  • Howes, C.
  • Schmidt, C. C.

Additional publication details

  • Journal Title Geophysical Research Letters
  • Publication Date 2023-11-02
  • Volume 50
  • DOI 10.1029/2023GL104824
  • Abstract AbstractSatellite‐based Fire radiative power (FRP) retrievals are used to track wildfire activity but are sometimes not possible or have large uncertainties. Here, we show that weather radar products including composite and base reflectivity and equivalent rainfall integrated in the vicinity of the fires show strong correlation with hourly FRP for multiple fires during 2019–2020. Correlation decreases when radar beams are blocked by topography and when there is significant ground clutter (GC) and anomalous propagation (AP). GC/AP can be effectively removed using a machine learning classifier trained with radar retrieved correlation coefficient, velocity, and spectrum width. We find a power‐law best describes the relationship between radar products and FRP for multiple fires combined (0.67–0.76 R2). Radar‐based FRP estimates can be used to fill gaps in satellite FRP created by cloud cover and show great potential to overcome satellite FRP biases occurring during extreme fire events.
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