Cold Smoke: smoke-induced density currents cause unexpected smoke transport near large wildfires

Lareau, N. P.; Clements, C. B.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-11513-2015

Articles | Volume 15, issue 20

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 11513–11520, 2015

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-11513-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 11513–11520, 2015

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-11513-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 20

Research article 20 Oct 2015

Research article | 20 Oct 2015

Cold Smoke: smoke-induced density currents cause unexpected smoke transport near large wildfires

N. P. Lareau and C. B. Clements

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Final revised paper (published on 20 Oct 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 02 Jul 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C6215: 'Review acp-2015-287', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Aug 2015
- AC C6965: 'Response to Referee #1', Neil Lareau, 18 Sep 2015
RC C6476: 'Very interesting phenomena', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Sep 2015
- AC C6968: 'Response to Referee #2', Neil Lareau, 18 Sep 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Neil Lareau on behalf of the Authors (18 Sep 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (23 Sep 2015) by Bernhard Vogel

Short summary

This paper presents first observations of smoke-induced density currents, which are a boundary-layer flow phenomenon resulting from radiative shading by wild fire smoke. Our analysis uses a mobile Doppler lidar to reveal the anatomy and evolution of one such density current in northern California. The results show that these density currents can flow counter to the ambient wind and spread over long distances (e.g. 25km), causing unexpected smoke impacts.