Multimedia Gallery
Animation of Fire Spreading Up Hill
Fire spreads up a hill 200 meters high. [Wind: 3 meters from the red near the ground; expended fuel is shown on the terrain in brown; the buoyancy core at two degrees Celsius, in red; the enstrophy (or measure of total rotation) is a translucent surface in blue. (Date of Image: 2000)
More about this Image
This animation was produced by the NCAR Scientific Computing Division's Visualization Group. It is one of many performed as part of ongoing research at the Wildland Fire Research and Development Collaboratory, located in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Department of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). MMM department researchers collaborate both within NCAR and with outside researchers through participation in the Wildland Fire R&D Collaboratory, which was created in order to help coordinate research efforts around the world relating to fire research.
The simulations are designed to address questions about how wind speed influences fire behavior, vertical wind shear and the vertical temperature profile and do certain atmospheric conditions lead to blow-ups? It is also very important to understand the delicate and complicated relationship that develops between the atmosphere and potential fuels for future fires, the emissions that come from wildland fire, the actual combustion process in some detail, and the long-term effects of wildland fire on climatic factors such as carbon sequestration. Further information about this research is available at http://box.mmm.ucar.edu/research/wildfire/afm/simulations.html.
Credit: ©2005 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.
Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.
Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.
Also Available:
Download the high-resolution TIF version of the image. (602 KB)
Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.