NOAA Invests $34M in Fire Behavior Prediction

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will award more than $34 million to six research universities in NOAA’s Cooperative Institute system to improve wildfire behavior modeling, forecasting, and wildfire warnings. Over the next five years, the funding will:

• Help NOAA build and deploy new observing systems that detect and monitor wildfires and their impacts.
• Advance high-resolution models to predict fires, emissions, and air quality.
• Establish a new NOAA Fire Weather Testbed that will allow scientists and forecasters to evaluate experimental products and speed their transition to operations.
• Improve the ability of NOAA’s incident meteorologists (IMETs) to provide emergency support at fire locations.