Forecasting simulation of smoke dispersion from forest and land fires in Indonesia

Transboundary haze pollution has been a regular phenomenon since the last decades, particularly in ASEAN region. It was due to forest and land fires, which dominated by peatland fire. In contrast to a great impacts of the smoke haze, study on this area is still limited. Therefore, this study aimed to simulate smoke dispersion forecasting from forest and land fires in Indonesia. The output of the study can be used for supporting Fire Danger Rating System of forest and land fires occurrences. Simulation of smoke dispersion as hindcasting used Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model on forest and land fires cases occurred on 19 and 22 June 2013 for Pekanbaru-Sumatera region. Data used for this study were coming from Global Forecast System (GFS) with 0.5 degrees resolution and Emission Database Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR). Simulation results for Carbon Monoxide (CO) concentration as output of WRF-Chem indicated an identical pattern with Total Column CO - Atmospheric Infrared Sounders (AIRS-NASA) data with correlation of 0.61 - 0.98. The study revealed that WRF-Chem is able to forecast smoke dispersion from forest and land fires. Thus, it is possibly to include this study as one of early step in Early Warning System for smoke dispersion from forest and land fires in Indonesia. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.