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NASA “Wildfire Digital Twin” Pioneers New AI Models and Streaming Data Techniques for Forecasting Fire and Smoke

NASA’s “Wildfire Digital Twin” project will equip firefighters and wildfire managers with a superior tool for monitoring wildfires and predicting harmful air pollution events and help researchers observe global wildfire trends more precisely.

The tool, developed with funding from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office and NASA’s FireSense Program, will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to forecast potential burn paths in real time, merging data from in situ, airborne, and spaceborne sensors to produce global models with high precision.

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A wildfire simulation describing the spread of PM 2.5 aerosols during a recent controlled burn, generated using the WRF-SFIRE model. “Wildfire Digital Twin” will build on this and other models to simulate active burns with unprecedented resolution. Credit: Kathleen Clough/San Jose State University

Whereas current global models describing the spread of wildfires and smoke have a spatial resolution of about 10 kilometers per pixel, the Wildfire Digital Twin would produce regional ensemble models with a spatial resolution of 10-to-30 meters per pixel, an improvement of two orders of magnitude.

These models could be generated in a span of mere minutes. By comparison, current global models can take hours to produce.

Models with such high spatial resolution produced at this speed would be immensely valuable to first-responders and wildfire managers trying to observe and contain dynamic burns.

Milton Halem, a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, leads the Wildfire Digital Twin project, which includes a team of more than 20 researchers from six universities.

“We want to be able to provide firefighters with useful, timely information,” said Halem, adding that in the field, “there is generally no internet, and no access to big supercomputers, but with our API version of the model, they could run the digital twin not just on a laptop, but even a tablet,” he said.

NASA’s FireSense project is focused on leveraging the agency’s unique Earth science and technological capabilities to achieve improved wildfire management across the United States.

NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office supports this effort with its newest program element, Technology Development for support of Wildfire Science, Management, and Disaster Mitigation (FireSense Technology), which is dedicated to developing novel observation capabilities for predicting and managing wildfires –including technologies like Earth System Digital Twins.

Earth System Digital Twins are dynamic software tools for modeling and forecasting climate events in real time. These tools rely on data sources distributed across multiple domains to create ensemble predictions describing everything from floods to severe weather.

In addition to assisting first responders, an Earth System Digital Twin dedicated to modeling wildfires would also be valuable to scientists monitoring wildfire trends globally. In particular, Halem hopes Wildfire Digital Twins will improve our ability to study wildfires across global boreal forests of cold-hardy conifers, which sequester vast amounts of carbon.

When these forests burn, all of that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. One study, released in August of 2023, found that boreal wildfires alone accounted for 25% of all global CO2 emissions for that year to date.

“The reason CO2 emissions from Boreal wildfires are taking place at an increasing yearly rate is because global warming is rising faster at high latitudes than the rest of the planet, and as a result, boreal summers there are becoming longer,” said Halem. “Whereas the rest of the planet may have warmed one degree Celsius since the pre-industrial revolution, this region has warmed well over two degrees.”

Halem’s work builds on other wildfire models, particularly the NASA-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NUWRF) model, developed by NASA, and WRF-SFIRE, developed by a team of researchers with support from the National Science Foundation. These models simulate phenomena like wind speed and cloud cover, which makes them the perfect foundation for a Wildfire Digital Twin.

Specifically, Halem’s team is working on new satellite data assimilation techniques that will blend information from space-based remote sensors into their Wildfire Digital Twin, enabling improved global data forecasts that will be useful for emergencies and science missions alike.

In October, Halem’s team participated in the first FireSense field campaign in collaboration with the National Forest Service’s Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) to observe smoke as it traveled more than 10 miles during a controlled burn in Utah, using a ceilometer. Now the team is feeding that data into their modeling software to help it track plumes more accurately.

They’re especially interested in tracking particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers, which are small enough to pass through a person’s lungs and enter the bloodstream. These particles, also known as PM 2.5, can cause serious health issues even if a person is nowhere near an active burn.

“When these fires ignite and start to burn, they produce smoke, and this smoke travels considerable distances. It affects people not only locally, but also at distances of thousands of kilometers or more,” said Halem.

Data from the controlled burn will also help Halem and his team quantify the relationship between aerosols and precipitation. Increased aerosols from wildfires have a huge impact on cloud formation, which in turn impacts how precipitation occurs downstream of an affected fire burn.

Assimilating all this information as it streams from sensors in real time is essential for detailing the full impact of wildfires at local, regional, and global scales.

PROJECT LEAD

Milton Halem, University of Maryland at Baltimore County

SPONSORING ORGANIZATION

NASA’s FireSense Technology Program, a part of the agency’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), funds this project.

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Last Updated

May 21, 2024

Related Terms

• Earth Science
• Earth Science Technology Office
• Science-enabling Technology
• Technology
• Technology Highlights
• Wildfires

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A future space observatory could use exo-eclipses to tease out exomoon populations.

If you’re like us, you’re still coming down from the celestial euphoria that was last month’s total solar eclipse. The spectacle of the Moon blocking out the Sun has also provided astronomers with unique scientific opportunities in the past, from the discovery of helium to proof for general relativity. Now, eclipses in remote exoplanetary systems could aid in the hunt for elusive exomoons.

A recent study out of the University of Michigan in partnership with Johns Hopkins APL and the Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology entitled Exomoons & Exorings with the Habitable Worlds Observatory I: On the Detection of Earth-Moon Analog Shadows & Eclipses looks to use a future mission to hunt for eclipses, transits and occultations in distant systems.

Hunting for Exo-Moons

“HWO is likely to be able to detect exomoons using a variety of detection methods, unlike existing observatories,” Mary Anne Limbach (University of Michigan) lead author on the study told Universe Today. “In a system where we detect an exomoon via an exo-eclipse, we might be able to observe other signatures, such as light from the moon within the combined reflected light spectrum of the moon and the planet.”

The proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) was derived from the LUVOIR-B (Large Ultraviolet Optical and Infrared explorer) concept. This was highlighted in the Astro2020 Decadal Survey for space-based astronomy. HWO would work from the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point (the current home for Euclid and JWST), and launch on either an SLS or Falcon Heavy sometime in the mid-2030s. HWO would employ a free-flying ‘star-shield,’ allowing it to observe exoplanets orbiting stars directly. But what’s really enticing to observers is the idea of seeing large moons orbiting said planets. Thus far, claims of exomoon detections such as Kepler-1625b and Kepler-1708b have remained elusive. If, however, these moons orbit along their respective ecliptic planes, we’d see tell-tale dips in brightness as these moons pass into the planet’s shadow, then cast their shadows back on the host primary.

HabEx and its free-flying star shield. Credit: NASA/JPL Eclipses, Transits and Occultations

In astronomy, we call this eclipse-transit pattern a series of mutual events, as one body passes in front of another. In our own solar system, Jupiter is a prime example of this. Earth and the Moon experience similar sorts of events twice a year during what are known of as eclipse seasons.

Types of transiting ‘exo-eclipse’ events. Credit: University of Michigan.

“HWO’s primary mission is to search for signatures of life on planets orbiting other stars. To achieve this, HWO will need to observe many nearby star systems, sometimes for several days at a time,” says Limbach. “’During these observations, HWO will measure the reflected light from the directly imaged planets in the system. If an exo-eclipse (or transit) occurs during this time, we would observe significantly less light from the planet during the eclipse (up to about 30% less for an Earth-Moon analog, depending on the orbital phase).”

We already have some idea an ‘exo-eclipse’ or transit event might look like from a distance. In 2008, NASA repurposed the Deep Impact spacecraft for what was known of as the EPOXI (a combination of two acronyms: the Deep Impact Extended Investigation and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization missions). Looking back at the Earth-Moon system, EPOXI saw a series of transits. These give researchers some idea just what such an event might look like.

EPOXI sees the Moon transit the Earth. NASA/EPOXI Looking for Earth Analogs

The Habitable Worlds Observatory would work in the near-infrared, a band where large moons may outshine their host worlds. With an Earth-Moon analog system, HWO is expected to see 2-20 mutual events out to 10 parsecs distance. Larger gas giant events might be detectable out to 20 parsecs away.

“Since multiple exomoon detection methods will be available to HWO and we predict that these will facilitate exomoon detection, HWO may be capable of revealing general information about exomoons as a population, such as how common or rare large moons around Earth-like planets are, or the physical circumstances under which exomoons are readily found,” says Jacob Lustig-Yager (University of Washington). “If HWO is able to detect many exomoons, then this may open the door to such population studies in the future.”

To be sure, detection of exomoons via the exo-eclipses they produce will be difficult. This will represent the very cutting edge of what even the Habitable Worlds Observatory is capable of. This method will also have to contend with false signals. These include possible ‘exo-rings’ and even weather variability and rotation changing the albedo or overall brightness of the host primary. On the plus side, researchers note that younger systems should produce more mutual events. Think of the Earth-Moon system early in its history when the Moon was first ripped from the Earth and was much closer. This primordial Moon would’ve loomed large in the sky, producing lots of eclipses.

A Population of Exo-Moons

“The next aspect we are investigating is the spectroscopic detectability of ‘Earth-like’ moons orbiting gas giant planets in the habitable zone,” says Limbach. “While such moons have often been imaged in popular culture (e.g. Endor and Pandora), HWO may be the first observatory capable of detecting and characterizing them, should they exist.”

Another eclipse seen from a distance. The May 15-16 2022 total lunar eclipse, as seen from 100 million kilometers distant courtesy of NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. Credit: NASA

Ultimately, the methods described could lead to detection of an entire population of exomoons, allowing us to say with some authority just how common they are in the cosmos.

The post The Habitable Worlds Observatory Could See Lunar and Solar ‘Exo-Eclipses’ appeared first on Universe Today.

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Sols 4188-4190: Aurora Watch on Mars This image was taken by MAHLI onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4187 NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Earth planning date: Friday, May 17, 2024

During the night of May 10, Earth experienced a fantastic display of aurorae (Northern and Southern Lights) which extended all the way to tropical latitudes, courtesy of the strongest geomagnetic storm since 2003. The enormous solar active region 3664, which produced the X-class flares and powerful coronal mass ejections powering this magnetic storm, has since rotated away from Earth. However, this explosive sunspot group now faces Mars. Just as the active region rotated into Mars view, it unleashed the largest flare in 20 years, an X8.7 monster. This solar flare also aimed a coronal mass ejection (CME) at Mars, which is potentially capable of producing auroras. Given Mars’ lack of a global magnetic field, Martian aurorae are not concentrated at the poles as they are on Earth, but instead appear as a “global diffuse aurora” that are associated with Mars’ ancient, magnetized crust. One of the planned observations for Curiosity this weekend will be a night-time 12×1 Mastcam observation of the sky above Texoli Butte, in a hope to capture one of these elusive Martian aurorae. 

Contact science on “Tuolumne Meadows” and “Parker Lakes” on sol 4187 completed successfully. The included picture is a MAHLI image of “Parker Lakes” taken on Sol 4187, which shows abundant bedrock nodules, some perched on tiny stalks like a miniature version of the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon National Park. Unfortunately, the drive on sol 4187 faulted after 10 m due to a steer stall on the right rear wheel, and the resulting wheel placement was too uncertain to support contact science. Our current plan skips sol 4188, as Earth passes are too low on the horizon for Curiosity to successfully receive commands for that sol. On Sol 4189,  Curiosity will observe the layered bedrock target “Polemonium Pass” with ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam, as well as more distant white rocks around “Falls Ridge” with ChemCam RMI and Mastcam. The first target is named for a 11,600 ft pass near the northern border of Yosemite National Park. The word “Polemonium” refers to Polemonium eximium, the skypilot or showy sky pilot alpine flower only found above 10000 feet in the Sierra Nevada. The target name “Falls Ridge” honors a towering ridge-line of granite domes forming the southern wall of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. All targets in this area of Mount Sharp are named after the Bishop geological quadrangle in the High Sierra and Owens Valley of Calfornia. Mastcam will also image a nearby troughs between the blocky rocks surrounding the rover.  Atmospheric observations in this science block include a dust devil survey, atmospheric opacity measurement, Navcam suprahorizon movie, and rover deck image. Curiosity will then perform a block of atmospheric observations with APXS and SAM to measure atmospheric constituents. Well after dark, Mastcam will search for aurora in the sky above our rover. Curiosity starts the next sol (4190) with a ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam observation of “The Fissures,” a finely laminated bedrock target named for a deep bedrock joint on the south wall of Yosemite Valley. This is followed by a 10×1 RMI mosaic of Texoli butte, ChemCam passive sky, deck monitor, and dust devil survey.  Curiosity then will start its 27 m drive, finishing near the lip of the Gediz Vallis channel. After the drive ends, Curiosity will perform its usual post drive panoramic imaging and take a MARDI frame of the ground under the rover. The next morning, Curiosity will perform early morning atmospheric observations including Mastcam solar tau to measure dust in the atmosphere, Navcam opacity measurement, and Navcam zenith and suprahorizon cloud movies.  On Monday, we will do contact science at the new location, then decide where to drive across the channel sands on our way up Mount Sharp.

Written by Deborah Padgett, OPGS Task Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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May 20, 2024

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