Evaluation and Improvement of Smoke Plume Rise Models

The purpose of this JFSP project was to evaluate and improve the performance of Daysmoke in simulating smoke plume rise of prescribed burning. A combined approach of field measurement, numerical modeling, and dynamical and statistical analysis was used. Smoke plume height was measured with a ceilometer for 20 prescribed burns in the southeastern U.S. The measured data was used to validate Daysmoke simulation. An empirical smoke plume rise model was developed based on the RAWS observations. Daysmoke was improved by including the number of multiple updraft cores. Regional air quality modeling was conducted with smoke plume rise provided by Daysmoke. A Daysmoke user interface was developed for smoke management applications. The key findings include (1) Smoke time and vertical structure appear in three patterns, two of which have significant fluctuations at different time scales. (2) Daysmoke is able to simulate plume heights at a reasonable level for most of the measured burns. (3) The regression model using three RAWS measurement elements of wind, fuel moisture and fuel temperature has good agreement with the measurements. (4) The inclusion of multiple smoke updraft core number improves Daysmoke simulation of vertical profile and in some cases plume height. (5) CMAQ simulations are improved with plume height provided by Daysmokewith multiple core property