Scientists gather to watch Saskatchewan fires go 'pyro'

Margaret Munro in Canwest News Service: Scientists say the wildfires in Northern Saskatchewan could go "pyro" this weekend, sending ash, smoke and gases soaring more than 10 kilometres up into Earth's upper atmosphere. It is one of the more spectacular ways nature regenerates the northern boreal forest - and one with such far-ranging implications that NASA has two research planes and 120 scientists in Cold Lake, Alta., tracking the blazes.

"It's the same as having a volcano go off," says Canadian fire expert Brian Stocks of the "pyro-convection" that could occur as early as Friday.

A cool front moving in over the fires is setting up the kind of explosive conditions that can send smoke billowing into the stratosphere, which starts about 10 kilometres up. Pyro-convection is also associated with "blow-out" fire conditions on the ground fuelling the fires and speed they travel at, says Stocks: "Basically the fire accelerates the convection and the convection accelerates the fire."

…There are about 120 scientists from around the world at the command post, two planes based in Cold Lake and a third, a B-200 King Air, in Yellowknife. This morning dozens of the scientists at Cold Lake will scramble onto the P-3B aircraft and DC-8 jetliner, that have been converted into flying laboratories. Teams on the ground will keep them posted on fire behaviour and best smoke plumes to sample.

….The fire emissions are also being tracked by satellite and instruments being carried into the atmosphere by balloons being released from a network of ground stations across the country, as part of the project called ARCTAS, short for Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites. While this month's focus is on fires, earlier this year the planes were criss-crossing the north form Alaska to Greenland sampling the pollution wafting in from Asia, Siberia, Europe and the North America and contributing to Arctic haze. The $24-million, three-year mission is an international polar year project to better understand the impact fire and pollution have on the northern atmosphere and changing climate system….

NASA shot of Canadian forest fires