27-101: Fire Weather and Atmospheric Composition Modeler

Research Scientist Position

The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University (CSU) seeks to fill a full-time Research Scientist position designed to conduct collaborative research with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) located at the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, CO. The individual in this position will work in the NOAA/OAR/GSL Earth Prediction Advancement Division's (EPAD) Fire Weather and Atmospheric Composition Branch (FWACB).

CIRA at Colorado State University is a multi-million-dollar research organization located on CSU's Foothills Campus in Fort Collins, Colorado. CIRA is a cooperative institute that is also a research department within CSU's College of Engineering, in partnership with the Department of Atmospheric Science. Its vision is to conduct interdisciplinary research in the atmospheric sciences by entraining skills beyond the meteorological disciplines, exploiting advances in engineering and computer science, facilitating transitional activity between pure and applied research, leveraging both national and international resources and partnerships, and assisting NOAA, CSU, the State of Colorado, and the Nation through the application of our research to areas of societal benefit.

NOAA's Global Systems Laboratory is a federal science and research laboratory under NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. GSL provides the National Weather Service (NWS) and the nation with environmental observation, prediction, computer, visualization, and information systems. These systems deliver data, forecasts, and predictions of weather, including severe weather events, within the next few minutes to weeks away. GSL is a leader in the applied research, directed development, and technology transfer of environmental data, models, products, and services that enhance environmental understanding with the outcome of supporting commerce, protecting life and property, and promoting a scientifically literate public.

EPAD's FWACB has been leading the development of regional and global aerosol and air quality forecast models in collaboration with other laboratories and universities over many years. One of these models is the meteorology-chemistry model Weather Research and Forecast coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem), which has been widely used in a wide range of atmospheric composition modeling applications around the world. The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh coupled with Smoke (HRRR-Smoke), which is based on the WRF-Chem framework, is currently NOAA's flagship operational model for smoke prediction.

This model forecasts smoke from wildland fires and its impact on radiation.

The coupled meteorology-chemistry models developed at GSL allow simulating complex gas/aerosol chemistry and aerosol-meteorology interactions on regional and global scales. Currently GSL/EPAD in collaboration with other groups is leading the development and testing of new aerosol and fire weather forecasting models coupled to the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS). This new model (cheMPAS-Fire) is being tested in real time at 3-km resolution over the contiguous US.

This is a full time position, funded for two years, with an option to renew contingent upon satisfactory performance and available funding. The individual in this position will be part of a team responsible for the design and development of fire weather and atmospheric composition capabilities for convection-allowing coupled meteorology-chemistry models. The individual in this position will work in collaboration with other scientists and software developers to design, develop, test and refine the fire spread, fire-weather interactions and atmospheric composition representation in the coupled chemistry-meteorology models.

In particular, the modeler will contribute to the transition of the new fire weather and atmospheric composition modeling capabilities to the Unified Forecast System (UFS), NOAA's code base for operational prediction. Most importantly, the modeler will contribute to the connection of the MPAS-based UFS with the Community Fire Behavior Model (CFBM) to advance the prediction of fire spread toward future operational implementations.

This will involve improvement to the representation of fuel loading and moisture datasets into the model, conducting sensitivity simulations of the new model and its evaluation against aircraft and satellite observations, and its refinement based on evaluation results. This position will report to the CIRA Associate Director.

Contribute to the connection of the CFBM to the MPAS-based UFS Conduct fire spread simulations with the cheMPAS-Fire model with CFBM for different wildfire cases Implement and test new parameterizations for gas/aerosol chemistry in the MPAS-based RRFS-Smoke and cheMPAS-Fire models Conduct fire emission inversions using ground-based and satellite observations of atmospheric constituents Evaluate the…