Technical Note: Sensitivity of 1-D smoke plume rise models to the inclusion of environmental wind drag

2010

Abstract. Vegetation fires emit hot gases and particles which are rapidly transported upward by the positive buoyancy generated by the combustion process. In general, the final vertical height that the smoke plumes reach is controlled by the thermodynamic stability of the atmospheric environment and the surface heat flux released by the fire. However, the presence of a strong horizontal wind can enhance the lateral entrainment and induce additional drag, particularly for small fires, impacting the smoke injection height. In this paper, we revisit the parameterization of the vertical transport of hot gases and particles emitted from vegetation fires, described in Freitas et al. (2007), to in…