Thread by @nplareau

The 2023 Canadian fire season is like no-other in the satellite record (2000-pres). Here are the accumulated fire-radiative power (FRP) curves, with 2023 (magenta) in a league of its own. Note that smoke production is proportional to FRP. (data= MODIS, results= prelim) #pyrocene

For reference here is a similar analysis for Western US, note the exceptional 2020 and 2021 fire years. The labor day 2020 fire outbreak was really something else. Note that these plots are not fire area, but the combined effect of area and intensity. @ggweather

1/n: What is "Fire-Radiative Power"? Its a measure of the rate (Joules/second) at which fires emit radiant energy in the form of thermal (infrared) radiation. This is much like what you feel from a wood stove: add logs the radiant heat goes up.

2/n: FRP is only about 1/10th of the energy that comes out of the fire, with the bulk of the heat going into a "convective heat flux", which drive the powerful fire-generated updrafts/plumes.

3/n: The FRP can be summed over all the satellite detected fire pixels and accumulated over the course of a fire season. Thus it measures both the total size and intensity of fires.

4/n: Thus you could get the same total FRP from a large but low-intensity fire or a small and high-intensity fire. In practice, though, many of our large fires are both large and intense.

5/n: I'm not sure if others have produced these annual curves before, but to me it is a nice analog to precipitation curves, capturing the net effect of these fire seasons. Seems a bit more informative than acerage alone...