It’s not Just Hot Air: Improved Air Quality Model Aids Forecasters in The Field

Imagine you’re a NOAA weather forecaster in the field during a raging, rapidly-spreading wildfire. Your title is incident meteorologist (or IMET), and your job is to support agencies and emergency responders who fight these devastating blazes by providing accurate weather forecasts. Your forecasts help determine a variety of factors about how the weather could impact the fire, including but not limited to how quickly the fire might spread and where it could go.

But you can’t do it alone.

On the ground and in the lab

Behind the scenes, NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) and Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) in College Park, Maryland, play a vital role in these critical forecasts. They produce forecast models of air quality that allow IMETs and air quality forecasters to provide more accurate information to emergency responders and the public.

In May 2024, the EMC, working closely with ARL, developed and released a model update that keeps the public, NOAA and partners aware of changes in air quality. The seventh and newest upgrade to the Air Quality Model (AQM v7), builds on past improvements by accounting for more sources of pollutants and putting them together in one air quality model.

How the model works

Information like this doesn’t just appear out of thin air.

The AQM v7 forecasts when and where pollutants will be removed from the air, such as getting pulled to the ground by rain, and it predicts how the pollutants will spread out or concentrate through both the horizontal and vertical planes of the atmosphere. AQM v7 incorporates new data from satellite sources more quickly than the last version, and it better accounts for variations and changes in wildfire emissions.

read more at noaa.gov.