Comparison of WoFS-Smoke with WRF-SFIRE Smoke Forecasts

Accurate smoke forecasting during wildfires is essential for hazard assessment and public health protection. Current operational models have limitations in representing dynamic fire-atmosphere interactions. This study aimed to assess the performance of the fire-atmosphere coupled version of the Warn-on-Forecast System (WoFS) and compare it with the classic WoFS in simulating wildfire smoke distribution and structure. Two Oklahoma wildfire events were simulated, and model outputs were compared against radar reflectivity observations for plume-top height, horizontal dispersion, and vertical structure. Both models showed comparable agreement with observations. WoFS-Smoke performed similarly or better in the early forecast period (0–1 h) due to direct smoke injection, whereas WRF-SFIRE, using a WoFS environment, required ~1 h spin-up before producing more realistic, continuous plume structures through fire-atmosphere coupling. SFIRE tended to overestimate plume height in one case and underestimate it in another. Coupling WoFS to SFIRE generally produced more realistic forecast smoke plume characteristics resulting from the dynamical coupling between the forecast environment and wildfire properties. The combination of WoFS and WRF-SFIRE opens up new possibilities in short-term wildfire smoke forecasting, setting the foundation for future operational models.