AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Next Generation Wildfires: Firestorms at the Urban-Wildland Interface
KEITH BEIN, Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Anthony S. Wexler, University of California, Davis
Abstract Number: 394 Working Group: Biomass Combustion: Emissions, Chemistry, Air Quality, Climate, and Human Health
Abstract Due to climate change, wildfires are increasing in size, frequency, duration and severity accompanied by longer fire seasons and larger geographical areas of susceptibility. Concomitantly, human development continues to expand and the boundary between remote wildlands and densely populated regions decreases, making large populations of people vulnerable to large scale wildfires that used to be remote, isolated occurrences. A striking example of this was the Northern California Firestorm in October 2017 that devasted several neighborhoods and business districts throughout Napa and Sonoma Counties, perhaps most notably Coffee Park in Santa Rosa. This was an unprecedented event where a substantial fraction of combustion involved construction materials, consumer products, infrastructure, common household items and various other substances rather than biomass. Although wildfires have been studied for decades and there is a substantial body of literature characterizing biomass combustion emissions, there is a huge knowledge gap in the composition, and subsequent toxicity, of these emissions when wildfires cross boundaries into urban and residential areas. A Rapid Response Mobile Research Unit has been designed and built to address this knowledge gap. Preliminary results from deployment of this unit in the 2017 and 2018 Northern California wildfires will be presented.