the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 08 Nov 2023
INFERNO-peat v1.0.0: A representation of northern high latitude peat fires in the JULES-INFERNO global fire model
Abstract. Peat fires in the Northern high latitudes have the potential to burn vast amounts of carbon rich organic soil, releasing large quantities of long-term stored carbon to the atmosphere. Due to anthropogenic activities and climate change, peat fires are increasing in frequency and intensity across the high latitudes. However, at present they are not explicitly included in most fire models. Here we detail the development of INFERNO-peat, the first parameterisation of peat fires in the JULES-INFERNO fire model. INFERNO-peat utilises knowledge from lab and field-based studies on peat fire ignition and spread to be able to model peat burnt area, burn depth and carbon emissions, based on data of the moisture content, inorganic content, bulk density, soil temperature and water table depth of peat. INFERNO-peat improves the representation of burnt area in the high latitudes, with peat fires simulating on average an additional 0.305 M km2 of burn area each year, emitting 224.10 Tg of carbon. Compared to GFED5, INFERNO-peat captures ~20 % more burnt area, whereas INFERNO underestimated burning by 50 %. Additionally, INFERNO-peat substantially improves the representation of interannual variability in burnt area and subsequent carbon emissions across the high latitudes. The coefficient of variation in carbon emissions is increased from 0.071 in INFERNO to 0.127 in INFERNO-peat, an almost 80 % increase. Therefore, explicitly modelling peat fires shows a substantial improvement in the fire modelling capabilities of JULES-INFERNO, highlighting the importance of representing peatland systems in fire models.
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Notice on discussion status
The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
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Preprint
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Supplement
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
- Preprint
(1458 KB) - Metadata XML
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Supplement
(572 KB) - BibTeX
- EndNote
- Final revised paper
Journal article(s) based on this preprint
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-2399', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Dec 2023
General Comments:
The authors present an enhancement to the JULES fire model INFERNO, which enables that model to simulate peat fire (ground fire) in northern latitudes. INFERNO-peat is implemented in Python as an external model that is driven by output from JULES-INFERNO. Simulations driven by two different ignitions forcing datasets for 1997 - 2014 were compared to several global and one regional observational datasets. The INFERNO-peat implementation increases northern latitude burnt area estimates bringing it closer to observation products such as GFED5 and FireCCILT11. The spatial correlation with observations is reasonable, but with some biases. The simulations also had larger and more realistic intern annual variability than INFERNO. Emissions were correspondingly increased with INFERNO-peat, closer to total emissions estimates. Again regional biases were present. The GFED 500 meter product, which contains aboveground and below-ground emission estimates was used to look at emissions more closely. This revealed that biases were dominated by below-ground carbon emissions being too low or too high in different regions. Inaccuracies in estimates of vegetation in JULES-INFERNO are likely propagating through to drive some of the biases in INFERNO-peat as well. Improving prediction of peat fires in models is important because of the both climate and societal impacts. Improvements to INFERNO-peat could come from better representing human behavior and the specifics of peat emissions. The authors also highlight the need for better detection and estimation of ground fires, which is not always observable with current satellites.
The authors have presented a well written and interesting article documenting INFERNO-peat. The model extension is welcome advancement and the simulations results are compelling. This work is relevant and novel. I can only suggest a few minor changes and areas for improvement as follows:
In Figure 1. the ‘r’ is missing in ‘moisture’.
The equations in section 2 would be easier to understand if units were given with the first mention of each variable. While the units for some are implied or inferable, others are not. Specifically, I could not determine the units for FlamPFT in section 2.1, soil moisture (SM) in 2.2, and burnt area (BApeat) in section 2.3.
In figure 3 the color scale makes it very hard to make out any signal in Fennoscandia and Alaska for most panels. Changing the scale so that true zero cells have their own color (white?) while low non-zero values have another color would make comparisons easier.
Figure 9 is interpretable with aid of the text. However, it would be clearer if the INFERNO bar was marked as “aboveground” and the peat only as “below-ground” in the legend.
The discussion is quite complete. However, a few lines discussing any potential benefits of (or obstacles to) full integration of the INFERNO-peat logic into JULES-INFERNO would be appreciated.
Given the number of colors in supplemental figure 5 it would be helpful to either mark any PFTs not shown in the plot or remove them entirely from the legend.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2399-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Katie Blackford, 09 Feb 2024
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2399/egusphere-2023-2399-AC1-supplement.pdf
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Katie Blackford, 09 Feb 2024
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-2399', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Dec 2023
This work developed a new model INFERNO-peat. It has some improvements from the original INFERNO model in terms of estimations of burnt area, carbon emissions, etc, especially in northern high latitudes. The major comments are summarized as follows:
- How did the model consider the effects of wind speed and ambient temperatures? I believe they play important roles in the ignition and spread of peat fires.
- L55, ‘‘but can burn to as deep as 50cm’’. Some recent lab experiments showed it can burn at 100 cm depth (Qin et al. 2022)
- L150, from Eq. 2, the combustibility of peat soil only depends on its moisture content. Even though the authors state MC plays dominate role, there are many studies emphasizing the significance of other factors like inorganic content (Frandsen 1997), ambient temperature, fuel density, etc.
- Line 165, the unit is missing.
- Line 180, the carbon emission calculation is too rough. I understand the authors try to calculate the total emitted carbon. But your cited works either use emission factors or carbon emission flux (7.1 kg C/m2). Assuming that all carbon (C) from the burned fuel (Eq. 5) is completely converted to emissions is far from realistic.
- In Fig. 2a, it indicates peat becomes incombustible when MC =100%. But in Line 48, it states “However, fires can still be maintained at moisture contents as high as 160% (Rein, 2013; Hu et al., 2019b; Rein, 2015; Purnomo et al., 2020)”. It is because the critical MC can change with other parameter (Frandsen 1997)
- 3, It seems INFERNO-peat can capture more fires in high latitudes but less fires in low latitudes (compared with GFED and fireCCILT11), especially in Eurasia area. Can the authors explain why?
- 5, 8, 9: The authors compare the average values over several years. However, providing subplots with the average values for each region on a yearly basis would be more compelling.
Frandsen WH (1997) Ignition probability of organic soils. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 27, 1471–1477. doi:10.1139/x97-106.
Qin Y, Musa DNS, Lin S, Huang X (2022) Deep peat fire persistently smouldering for weeks: a laboratory demonstration. International Journal of Wildland Fire 32, 86–98. doi:10.1071/wf22143.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2399-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Katie Blackford, 09 Feb 2024
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2399/egusphere-2023-2399-AC2-supplement.pdf
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
-
RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-2399', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Dec 2023
General Comments:
The authors present an enhancement to the JULES fire model INFERNO, which enables that model to simulate peat fire (ground fire) in northern latitudes. INFERNO-peat is implemented in Python as an external model that is driven by output from JULES-INFERNO. Simulations driven by two different ignitions forcing datasets for 1997 - 2014 were compared to several global and one regional observational datasets. The INFERNO-peat implementation increases northern latitude burnt area estimates bringing it closer to observation products such as GFED5 and FireCCILT11. The spatial correlation with observations is reasonable, but with some biases. The simulations also had larger and more realistic intern annual variability than INFERNO. Emissions were correspondingly increased with INFERNO-peat, closer to total emissions estimates. Again regional biases were present. The GFED 500 meter product, which contains aboveground and below-ground emission estimates was used to look at emissions more closely. This revealed that biases were dominated by below-ground carbon emissions being too low or too high in different regions. Inaccuracies in estimates of vegetation in JULES-INFERNO are likely propagating through to drive some of the biases in INFERNO-peat as well. Improving prediction of peat fires in models is important because of the both climate and societal impacts. Improvements to INFERNO-peat could come from better representing human behavior and the specifics of peat emissions. The authors also highlight the need for better detection and estimation of ground fires, which is not always observable with current satellites.
The authors have presented a well written and interesting article documenting INFERNO-peat. The model extension is welcome advancement and the simulations results are compelling. This work is relevant and novel. I can only suggest a few minor changes and areas for improvement as follows:
In Figure 1. the ‘r’ is missing in ‘moisture’.
The equations in section 2 would be easier to understand if units were given with the first mention of each variable. While the units for some are implied or inferable, others are not. Specifically, I could not determine the units for FlamPFT in section 2.1, soil moisture (SM) in 2.2, and burnt area (BApeat) in section 2.3.
In figure 3 the color scale makes it very hard to make out any signal in Fennoscandia and Alaska for most panels. Changing the scale so that true zero cells have their own color (white?) while low non-zero values have another color would make comparisons easier.
Figure 9 is interpretable with aid of the text. However, it would be clearer if the INFERNO bar was marked as “aboveground” and the peat only as “below-ground” in the legend.
The discussion is quite complete. However, a few lines discussing any potential benefits of (or obstacles to) full integration of the INFERNO-peat logic into JULES-INFERNO would be appreciated.
Given the number of colors in supplemental figure 5 it would be helpful to either mark any PFTs not shown in the plot or remove them entirely from the legend.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2399-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Katie Blackford, 09 Feb 2024
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2399/egusphere-2023-2399-AC1-supplement.pdf
-
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Katie Blackford, 09 Feb 2024
-
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-2399', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Dec 2023
This work developed a new model INFERNO-peat. It has some improvements from the original INFERNO model in terms of estimations of burnt area, carbon emissions, etc, especially in northern high latitudes. The major comments are summarized as follows:
- How did the model consider the effects of wind speed and ambient temperatures? I believe they play important roles in the ignition and spread of peat fires.
- L55, ‘‘but can burn to as deep as 50cm’’. Some recent lab experiments showed it can burn at 100 cm depth (Qin et al. 2022)
- L150, from Eq. 2, the combustibility of peat soil only depends on its moisture content. Even though the authors state MC plays dominate role, there are many studies emphasizing the significance of other factors like inorganic content (Frandsen 1997), ambient temperature, fuel density, etc.
- Line 165, the unit is missing.
- Line 180, the carbon emission calculation is too rough. I understand the authors try to calculate the total emitted carbon. But your cited works either use emission factors or carbon emission flux (7.1 kg C/m2). Assuming that all carbon (C) from the burned fuel (Eq. 5) is completely converted to emissions is far from realistic.
- In Fig. 2a, it indicates peat becomes incombustible when MC =100%. But in Line 48, it states “However, fires can still be maintained at moisture contents as high as 160% (Rein, 2013; Hu et al., 2019b; Rein, 2015; Purnomo et al., 2020)”. It is because the critical MC can change with other parameter (Frandsen 1997)
- 3, It seems INFERNO-peat can capture more fires in high latitudes but less fires in low latitudes (compared with GFED and fireCCILT11), especially in Eurasia area. Can the authors explain why?
- 5, 8, 9: The authors compare the average values over several years. However, providing subplots with the average values for each region on a yearly basis would be more compelling.
Frandsen WH (1997) Ignition probability of organic soils. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 27, 1471–1477. doi:10.1139/x97-106.
Qin Y, Musa DNS, Lin S, Huang X (2022) Deep peat fire persistently smouldering for weeks: a laboratory demonstration. International Journal of Wildland Fire 32, 86–98. doi:10.1071/wf22143.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2399-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Katie Blackford, 09 Feb 2024
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2399/egusphere-2023-2399-AC2-supplement.pdf
Peer review completion
Journal article(s) based on this preprint
Model code and software
INFERNO-peat V1.0.0 Katie R. Blackford, Matthew Kasoar, Chantelle Burton, Colin Prentice, Apostolos Voulgarakis https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10007362
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Cited
1 citations as recorded by crossref.
Katie R. Blackford
Matthew Kasoar
Chantelle Burton
Eleanor Burke
Iain Colin Prentice
Apostolos Voulgarakis
The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
- Preprint
(1458 KB) - Metadata XML
-
Supplement
(572 KB) - BibTeX
- EndNote
- Final revised paper