Simulation of coupled fire/atmosphere interaction with the MesoNH-ForeFire models

International audienceSimulating interaction between forest fire and atmospheric processes requires a highly detailed and computationally intensive model. Processing this type of simulations in wildland fires forbids combustion-based models due to the large amount of fuels to be simulated, in terms of quantity and diversity. In this paper we propose an approach that couples a fire area simulator to a mesoscale weather numerical model in order to simulate local fire/atmosphere interaction. Five idealized simulation cases are analysed showing strong interaction between topography and the fire front induced wind, interactions that could not be simulated in non-coupled simulations. The same approach applied to a real case scenario also shows results that are qualitatively comparable to the observed case. All these results were obtained in less than a day of calculation on a dual processor computer, leaving room for improvement in grid resolution that is currently limited to fifty meter