Fluid dynamics of forest fire plumes

Extreme wildfire events (EWEs) are moments when fires exceed the extinguishing capacity of the fire and rescue services. Accurately predicting these events is essential for proper evacuation measures, especially since climate and land use change are increasing EWE occurrences. However, operational models underestimate the wildfire spread up to a factor 20 compared to observations. We hypothesise that the interaction between the wildfire and the atmosphere explains this mismatch in wildfire spread between observations and predictions. Hence, we will investigate wildfire-atmosphere interactions to better understand wildfire spread behaviour.