If you’re wondering whether it’ll still be smoky this weekend, an interactive tool can help forecast smoke throughout the Northwest.
The interactive forecasting map from Washington State University predicts local air quality conditions over a three-day period.
“Think of it like a weather forecast, but for the air we breathe,” said Jun Meng, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in WSU’s Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, in a news release. “When we plan for the weekend or other events, we always check the weather. But with the intensifying wildfire situation, people are becoming more aware of the air quality and the need for this kind of forecast.”
It’s an update to a long-term air quality forecasting project called AIRPACT, which was one of the first high-resolution forecasting tools when it premiered in 2001.
The AIRPACT project originally started in the Seattle area to monitor things like wintertime inversions and wood stove use, said Farren Thorpe, a natural resource scientist with the Washington Department of Ecology. Thorpe has worked with AIRPACT for around 20 years.
The project quickly expanded to include the rest of Washington, Oregon and Idaho. With that, “ wildfires became a really big, important concern for forecasting,” Thorpe said.
The AIRPACT project also helps regulators let people know when there’s going to be poor air quality, whether from inversions, ozone or wildfires, Thorpe said.
This update, which took about a year to develop, is part of AIRPACT6. It pulls data from satellites, meteorological information and emissions data. The project provides information for agencies to help make decisions on health advisories and burn bans.
As this is an evolving research project, Meng said people should pay attention to official advisories.
Along with wildfire smoke and ozone concentrations, the interactive map can show where current wildfires are burning. It can also add in weather conditions.
“Now you can see different neighborhoods. Their concentration could be different due to the different wind conditions and where the fires are,” he said.
The model is customized to the Northwest, Meng said.
“We have different vegetation types in this region. We also consider our complex terrain, like our mountains and valleys,” he said.
The tool doesn’t work well on cellphones, Meng said, because of the many pop-up options.
However, he said he hoped citizen scientists could use it to figure out their long-term air quality trends in their area. The tool allows people to look at the history of specific locations, Meng said.
In the future, Meng said he’d like to include fire behavior in the forecasts and look more deeply at the types of toxics in different smoke.
“ Those burning houses create completely different pollution than a burning tree,” he said.
The mapping tool update was much needed, Thorpe said.
“(This) new version of AIRPACT6 is a big improvement over the prior version,” Thorpe said.
The tool was sponsored by the NW-AIRQUEST Consortium, which includes agencies and universities from Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
Read the audio transcript here.
