Running real-time forecasting using WRFx and WRF-SFIRE

Back to the WRF-SFIRE user guide.

IN CONSTRUCTION

For description and instructions on how to set up WRF-SFIRE and WRFx to run a real wildfire event, access the Running WRF-SFIRE with real data in the WRFx system page.

Fire initialization package

To run WRF-SFIRE using WRFx with real-time data, WRFxPy needs to be extended with the fire_init module. The module is currently private, but it is planned to be made public once the publications are completed. If you require access to it before then, contact Angel Farguell (angel.farguellcaus@sjsu.edu).

The package utilizes the bounding box of the fire grid to retrieve past and current National(NIFC) airborne infrared fire perimeters, as well as recent (within the last 48 hours) VIIRS satellite hotspots, from ArcGIS services. The services used are:

Past IR Perimeters: Historic Geomac Perimeters Combined 2000-2018, Historic Perimeters 2019, and WFIGS Interagency Fire Perimeters
Current IR Perimeters: WFIGS Current Interagency Fire Perimeters
VIIRS Hotspots: Satellite (VIIRS) Thermal Hotspots and Fire Activity

The information collected can also be visualized on this ArcGIS website.

How to use WRFxPy with fire_init add-on

To add fire_init

1. Clone the repository in the src folder of WRFxPy by doing:

cd src 
git clone git@github.com:wirc-sjsu/fire_init.git

2. Install the ArcGIS Python environment. The currently preferred process is to have conda find the versions for you:

conda create -n arcgis python=3 netcdf4 pyproj
conda activate arcgis
conda install -c esri arcgis
conda install -c conda-forge lxml scipy simplekml
pip install shapely

On Linux x86-64, you can also use versions specified in a yml file:

 wget https://demo.openwfm.org/web/wrfx/arcgis.yml
 conda env create --name arcgis --file arcgis.yml

3. Activate the real-time option in the job JSON file by adding:

use_realtime: true

How does it work

While geogrid and acquisition+ungrib are running, WRFxPy also acquires the ArcGIS data. Then, after all these parallel processes finish, the metgrid and processing of the real-time information are performed. Finally, after these two processes, real is run, and after that, the fire data information is added to wrfinput files, and namelist options are switched to use the spin-up time using the fire_perimeter_time option in WRF-SFIRE.