WRF-Fire/WRF-SFIRE history
- Main article: WRF-SFIRE user guide. To get the software now, see How to get WRF-SFIRE.
This page tracks activity in the WRF-Fire and related software development. All members of the community are welcome to get an account and edit.
2004
- Ned Patton and Janice Coen propose WRF-Fire in a workshop paper and formulate the fundamental principles of how to combine WRF with the fire spread model from CAWFE.
2005
- Standalone fire model from CAWFE rewritten in F90 received from Ned Patton Mar 31 2005.
2006
- John Michalakes writes specs for support of fire grids in WRF Feb 6 2006
2007
- Alternative implementation of fire grid in nested domains in WRF by Jon Beezley Feb 29 2007
- WRF-Fire start: WRF+CAWFE tracers code received from Ned Patton became the initial commit in the WRF-Fire git repository set up by Jon Beezley Jun 6 2007
- Matlab prototype of level set method working Aug 30, 2007
- Imported a modular rewrite with a new standalone level set code, called SFIRE Sep 5 2007
- WRF+spread by level set coupled code working Nov 2 2007
- Ignition controlled from namelist Dec 24 2007
2008
- Change nodes on the fire mesh from corners to centers Feb 10 2008
- WPS support 3 Aug 2008
- Github repository https://openwfm/wrf-fire created Oct 10, 2008
- MPI support Oct 23 2008
- Cleanup, delete standalone driver and the CAWFE tracer code Nov 18 2008
- Landfire data conversion Dec 15 2008
2009
- Distributed memory (halos) Jan 7 2009
- Approved for release by UCD and NCAR under WRF public domain notice Mar 17 2009
- Set up nested ideal case May 4 2009
- WPS support for fire grid and nesting 7 May 2009
- First journal paper with a description of the WRF-Fire Mandel, Beezley, Coen, Kim; June 2009arXiv p.29ff
- Add namelist.fire to define fuel categories 20 Sep 2009
- Interpolate in the computation of fuel_left locally to save stack memory Oct 10 2009
- 3D visualization in Matlab Nov 3 2009
- Visualization in VisTrails and Supercomputing 2009 Demo, Nov 15 2009
2010
- Support for WRF restart 16 Jan 2010
- Control in namelist the initial atmosphere perturbation (bubble) in ideal run, off by default. 27 Feb 2010 See discussion.
- Version 19 Feb 2010 released with WRF 3.2 on Apr 2 2010
- Hyperbolic vertical mesh grading in ideal run not only exponential. Mar 9 2010
- Fetch high-resolution geogrid data automatically Apr 27 2010
- Walking line ignition (as the fireman walks igniting the fire) 23 May 2010
- Basic visualization in VAPOR. May 26 2010
- Merge git repository with WRF and WPS 3.2 Jun 12 2010 announcement
- Interpolate the terrain gradient to the fire mesh instead of differencing an interpolated terrain height. Jun 14 2010 See discussion.
- Replace includes for fire parameter arrays by a derived type. Jun 14 2010. See discussion.
- Resurrected a standalone driver for the fire code that is independent of WRF for diagnostics. 20 Jun 2010 See discussion.
- Surface initialization in ideal runs allows for defining surface properties like roughness, ground temperature, albedo etc., required by soil models and radiation codes. See discussion. Jul 6 2010
- Reading from a file in an ideal run: land use, fuel categories, topography Jul 22 2010
- Vertical wind profiles in Matlab for diagnostics Sun Jul 25 2010
- Interpolate wind to a given height (the same for all fuels) from log profile, and set the height as fire_wind_height in the namelist. Sep 11 2010, added wind reduction factor with defaults per Behave 16 Sep 2010
- Interpolating geographic coordinates to the fire mesh in WPS 17 Sep 2010
- Rate of spread diagnostics 16 Sep 2010.
- Support for NetCDF 4 output files based on HDF5 16 Oct 2010.
- Subscale ignition with zero initial radius. See discussion. Nov 2, 2010
2011
- Vertical log interpolation of the wind to different heights for different fuels. See discussion. 24 Feb 2011
- Ignition time interpolation for better quadrature of fuel left March 16, 2011. See discussion.
- Added independent adjustment factors of base spread rate, wind correction, and slope correction to fuel description Mar 23, 2011
- Perimeter ignition from specified ignition times on the whole domain, allowing for atmosphere and fuel consumption spin-up. Mar 24, 2011 in ideal run. See discussion.
- Reference paper discussion version Mandel, Beezley, Kochanski, Coupled atmosphere-wildland fire modeling with WRF-Fire version 3.3, March 9, 2011
- WRF-Fire released with WRF 3.3 Apr 6, 2011. The release code is based on the Nov 20, 2010 version with bug fix Jan 17, 2011, with further changes made at NCAR. Last version released with WRF.
- Reference paper final version used the name SFIRE. Code continued to be maintained in the original WRF-Fire Git repository.
- Timing from ESMF structures to support variable time step and ignition in a restart run. Jul 24, 2011 See discussion.
- Users guide moved to the wiki, including existing howtos as chapters. August 2, 2011
- Spread vector and Byram's fire intensity to estimate the severity of a potential fire for a fire danger rating map Aug 26, 2011
- Restart from wrfout (cycling=.true.) Sep 16, 2011 See discussion.
- Spatially variable moisture as a part of WRF input Sep 27, 2011
- Standalone model running from WRF atmospheric state. Oct 28 2011 See discussion.
2012
- Integrated fuel moisture model with input from WRF variables, based on the Canadian fire danger rating system Mar 10, 2012. See discussion.
- Smoke transport by WRF-Chem tracer April 21, 2012
- Multiple fire time steps in a single atmospheric step, for stability with highly heterogenous fuels Mar 30, 2012
- Fire area and sensible heat flux defined by bitmap images from a satellite or airborne sensor, in an ideal run Jul 27, 2012
- Fixed fire of a circular shape, stationary or moving along a line, with a time varying heat flux Jul 29, 2012
- Two validation papers accepted: Santa Ana fire arXiv:1202.3209 in Forest Management and Ecology and FireFlux arXiv:1206.3345 in Geoscientific Model Development Discussions December 17, 2012
2013
- Coupling with WRF-Chem RADM2 and MOZART models Jan 17, 2013
- Assimilation of RAWS fuel moisture data, Apr 25, 2013
- Utility for choosing ignition points on the mesh Jun 15, 2013
- Reference paper describing new features since 2011 and operational deployment in Israel Oct 9, 2013
- Fire model files in WRF source
phys/module-fr-sfire-*.Fwere renamed tophys/module-fr-fire-*.F
2014
- Assimilation of RAWS fuel moisture data in standalone
2015
- Continued development of WRF-Fire within WRF at NCAR started.
2016
- WRF transitioned from SVM source control to GitHub.
- Fire replay and cycling Apr 28, 2016
- WRF-Fire transitioned to a fork of WRF called WRF-SFIRE, which facilitates upgrades of WRF version. Aug 16, 2016