Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s Drying and Atmospheric Intensification—Fort McMurray

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

see my comments attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thanks the reviewer for his/her comments. We applied all the specifics comments. and the extensive editing.We rewrite the final sections with improvement. We added the suggested reference and additional references as it was suggested. Regarding the evaluation: this case that we studied and the case in suggested publication are not similar in observations. We also improved the figure 7. However for improvement of figure 10 we cannot plot both in the same coordinate as one of them is just an image. The figure 8-9 cannot be improved unless we remove some info including figure C. We prefer to keep the figure as they are unless the reviewer insist on the removal.  

Specific comments: 

Line 6: consider rephrasing “we used of WRF” 

Line 5 : Corrected 

Line40: “in absent of” 

Line 40 : Corrected to “in the absence of”

Line 52: PMCS is not defined 

Line 53 : definition is added 

line 55: “Buoyancy primarily determines updraft strength and wind shear determines the storm evolution”. Include reference. 

Line 56 : reference is added

Line 56: “adding moisture”. Mention mechanism 

Line 57 : mechanism is added

Line 70: “fire plum” 

Line 56 : corrected to “the fire plume”

Line 84: Hind ? 

Line 86 : corrected to “hindcast”

Line 234: “very course” 

Line 141 : corrected to “very Coarse”

line 236: “resolution of 35m2” include reference 

Line 142 : corrected

Line 247: Atlas of Canada. Include reference 2 

Line 155 : reference is added

Line 179-189: you discuss here brunt area product. This is probably not necessary. You did not discuss 

the hot spot product ealier in the same section. 

The section 

Line 161-183 : the detection of hotspots is discussed

Line 199: is is possible to add the daily burnt area map of the Fort McMurray report. 

No, We added all satellite burn to Model out put. but the report image is a PDF file with no georeference format. 

Line 199-202: consider re-phrasing. 

Line 204-209 : rephrased

Line 228: “grid point [170,186]” not necessary to the discussion 

Agree but it would be a good indicator and record for later. consider additional info please

Line 276: missing “of” ? 

Line 241 : rephrased

Line 289: consider mentioning where you see the LCL and LCF merging. 

Line 254 : the information is added

Line 307: missing “of” ? 

Line 306 : rephrased

Line 320: Such sentence are difficult to claim when only considering on simulation. 

It is not just based on one simulation WRF-Fire and WRF-SFIR has been simulated many cases in USa, Australia, Israel  11. Bakhshaii, A.; Johnson, E. A review of a new generation of wildfire−atmosphere modeling. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 2019, 49, 565–574. doi:10.1139/cjfr-2018-0138.12.

Line 328: consider rephrasing “the rode of ” 

Line 316 : rephrased

Line 324: “use the a” 

References: 

Trentmann, J., Luderer, G., Winterrath, T., Fromm, M. D., Servranckx, R., Textor, C., Herzog, M., Graf, H.- F., and Andreae, M. O.: Modeling of biomass smoke injection into the lower stratosphere by a large forest fire (Part I): reference simulation, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 5247–5260, 

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-6-5247-2006, 2006. 

Submission Date

27 May 2020

Date of this review

15 Jun 2020 11:18:26

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript on 'Wildfire Pyroconvection and CAPE: Buoyancy’s drying and atmospheric intensification−Fort McMurray' explores the importance of coupling fire and atmosphere model simulations. The topic is of great importance for readers in the wildfire community however I think the manuscript is not ready for publication yet.

My main concern relates to the writing. The manuscript needs to be reviewed thoroughly and proofread before re-submission. The writing is unclear, with numerous typos, missing punctuation as well as incomplete words and sentences. The text also contains numerous repetitions, and the narrative is difficult to follow. I’m not a native english speaker so I will only provide some examples of changes that could be made to the manuscript.

Line 6: delete ‘of’ from the following sentence: […] we used of WRF-Fire to capture [...]

Line 15: change ‘adopt’ to ‘adapt’

Line 21: unclear what ‘devisions’ means in this sentence

Line 26: unclear sentence, maybe change ‘have’ to ‘provide’?

Line 27: unclear sentence, maybe add a semicolon between ’products’ and ‘heat’?

Lines 39-43: these statements need to be supported by references

Line 40: unclear sentence, maybe change ‘absent’ to ‘absence’?

Line 46: unclear why ‘in the absence’ is in italic

Line 49: unclear what ‘basic knowledge’ means in this context

Line 52: the P in PMCS is not spelled out anywhere in the manuscript

Line 63: change ‘explor’ to ‘explore’

Line 73: unclear/incomplete sentence, what does ‘transition’ mean in this context? Transition from a small/manageable wildfire to a large one?

Line 78: change ‘pyroconvention’ to ‘pyroconvection’

Line 90: unclear what ‘normal’ means in this context. Do you refer to the climatological mean?

Line 106: change ‘in further south of city’ to ‘in the south of the city’

Line 110-111: remove repetition (‘satellite’ and ‘satellite images’)

Line 111: change ‘on second day’ to ‘on the second day’

Line 113: please explain why wind direction was unknown

Line 116: what is MWF009-16?

Line 120: please add a brief explanation of what WRF-Fire is.

Line 123: the supplementary material can provide the details but at least a concise description of modifications and assumptions is needed here.

Lines 125-127: The authors write ‘The Horse river wildfire simulation case study demonstrated the two-ways interaction of fire and atmosphere’. How was this demonstrated?

Figure 1 - caption:

• change ‘is’ to ‘shows’
• change ‘Background color presents elevation map’ to ‘the background color represents the elevation map’
• Explain what the blue areas are

Line 139: change ‘nest’ to ‘nested’

Line 140: change ‘ignighted’ to ‘ignited’

Line 146: change ‘and’ to ‘at’

Line 150: change ‘comparing the’ to ‘comparing to the‘

Line 157: remove ‘the’

Lines 187-188: unclear what the following sentence means ‘It would be sufficient for overall verification’.

Lines 188-189: change ‘unfortunte and’ to ‘a’

Line 190: change ‘to area’ to ‘to the area’

Line 201-202: unclear sentence

Section encapsulated results:

• unclear what ‘encapsulated’ means in this context
• Figures are not described in sufficient details
• Please describe the figures in order, for instance in line 231 the authors go back to Figure 5a after describing Figure 7. 

Section Discussion: 

• this section needs to be reviewed completely, it contains numerous repetitions and of previous statements and there is no explanation of the significance of the results in the context of the wider literature.
• The text from line 274 onwards is more appropriate for the results section.

Section Conclusion and lessons

• Remove ‘and lessons’ from the section header
• The section does not convey the significance of the results clearly
• Line 310, Unclear what the following sentence means ‘Despite the shortcoming with initialization’
• In line 324, unclear what ‘rode’ means in this context
• Line 324, please correct multiple typos

Author Response

We thanks the reviewer for his/her comments. We applied all the specifics comments. and the extensive editing.We rewrite the final sections with improvement.

Line 6: delete ‘of’ from the following sentence: […] we used of WRF-Fire to capture […]

Line 5: Correctected 

Line 15: change ‘adopt’ to ‘adapt’

Line 15: Correctected

Line 21: unclear what ‘devisions’ means in this sentence

Line 21: rephrased while longer explanation provided in line 316-336

Line 26: unclear sentence, maybe change ‘have’ to ‘provide’?

Line 26 :Modified as suggested

Line 27: unclear sentence, maybe add a semicolon between ’products’ and ‘heat’?

Line 27 :Modified

Lines 39-43: these statements need to be supported by references

Line 41 : References provided.

Line 40: unclear sentence, maybe change ‘absent’ to ‘absence’?

Line 40 : Amended.

Line 46: unclear why ‘in the absence’ is in italic

Line 46 : Amended.

Line 49: unclear what ‘basic knowledge’ means in this context

Line 49 : Amended with adding reference.

Line 52: the P in PMCS is not spelled out anywhere in the manuscript

Line 53 : Amended.

Line 63: change ‘explor’ to ‘explore’

Line 64 : Amended.

Line 73: unclear/incomplete sentence, what does ‘transition’ mean in this context? Transition from a small/manageable wildfire to a large one?

Line 74: rephrased

Line 78: change ‘pyroconvention’ to ‘pyroconvection’

Line 79 : Amended.

Line 90: unclear what ‘normal’ means in this context. Do you refer to the climatological mean?

Line 91: Amended

Line 106: change ‘in further south of city’ to ‘in the south of the city’

Line 108: Amended

Line 110-111: remove repetition (‘satellite’ and ‘satellite images’)

Line 112: Amended

Line 111: change ‘on second day’ to ‘on the second day’

Line 112: Amended

Line 113: please explain why wind direction was unknown

Line 116: explained.

Line 116: what is MWF009-16?

Line 106: Each fire has a name in Alberta. explanation is added.

Line 120: please add a brief explanation of what WRF-Fire is.

Line 123-124: Explanation and references are added.

Line 123: the supplementary material can provide the details but at least a concise description of modifications and assumptions is needed here.

Line 129: Full explanation is provided in Appendix A. and addressed. We avoid to add technical details in the main text to draw attention of a larger audience. This paper is not about how to do this. It is about why to do it. However we provided all references and guides of how to do it in appendix A. The main reference (Mandel, J.; Beezley, J.D.; Kochanski, A.K. Coupled atmosphere-wildland fire modeling with WRF 3.3 and SFIRE. Geoscientific Model Development 2011, 4, 591–610. doi:10.5194/gmd-4-591-2011.) has extensive publication on the fire modules and conversions. 

We avoid to repeat previous publications to keep the focus on the point of this paper. It meant to draw attention to the fact that after 3 decades existing science, it hasn’t been practically used in a such large natural disaster prediction. Why?

Lines 125-127: The authors write ‘The Horse river wildfire simulation case study demonstrated the two-ways interaction of fire and atmosphere’. How was this demonstrated?

Line 130-131: The text is amended for a better communication,

Figure 1 - caption:

• change ‘is’ to ‘shows’ 

Amended

• change ‘Background color presents elevation map’ to ‘the background color represents the elevation map’ 

Amended

• Explain what the blue areas are 

Explained

Line 139: change ‘nest’ to ‘nested’

Line 143: Amended

Line 140: change ‘ignighted’ to ‘ignited’

Line 144: Corrected

Line 146: change ‘and’ to ‘at’

Line 149: Amended

Line 150: change ‘comparing the’ to ‘comparing to the’

Line 154: Amended

Line 157: remove ‘the’

Line 161: removed

Lines 187-188: unclear what the following sentence means ‘It would be sufficient for overall verification’.

Line 190-193: rephrased

Lines 188-189: change ‘unfortunte and’ to ‘a’

Line 192: Amended

Line 190: change ‘to area’ to ‘to the area’

Line 194: Amended

Line 201-202: unclear sentence

Line 205: rephrased

Section encapsulated results:

• unclear what ‘encapsulated’ means in this context

Line 206: rephrased

• Figures are not described in sufficient details 

The comment is not clear or address to certain unclear figure

• Please describe the figures in order, for instance in line 231 the authors go back to Figure 5a after describing Figure 7. 

Line 234: corrected

Section Discussion: 

• this section needs to be reviewed completely, it contains numerous repetitions and of previous statements and there is no explanation of the significance of the results in the context of the wider literature.

The section has been reviewed and combined with encapsulated results. 

• The text from line 274 onwards is more appropriate for the results section.

Line 239 The section is adjusted, corrected and moved to 239

Section Conclusion and lessons

• Remove ‘and lessons’ from the section header

line206: removed 

• The section does not convey the significance of the results clearly

We write more details in this section in first 3 paragraphs. We also modified the previous section to have a better reading. 

• Line 310, Unclear what the following sentence means ‘Despite the shortcoming with initialization’ 

Line 299 The explanation is added. 

• In line 324, unclear what ‘rode’ means in this context

line 316: It was a typo and corrected to road

• Line 324, please correct multiple typos

line 316 -320: It was a typo and corrected to road

Submission Date

27 May 2020

Date of this review

01 Jun 2020 10:54:20

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

I would like to congratulate to the authors for the work.

The topic is interesting and is a tough field because of the multidisciplinary knowledge required.

Suggestions to the authors:

To remove English contractions.

To avoid to sentences without providing data about like 127 "It was also fast and efficient for real-time operational..." It would need to show the traces of the parallel run. Some authorities would run it but with 400 simultaneous wildfires we would need 57600 nodes exclusively for this during fire season. Some wildfires are in convection before the first 6 hours and first it should be detected in a workflow (+3h?).

Usually wildfire spread modelling uses some accuracy analysis, fire perimeters comparison or other factors like fire line intensity etc. In this work, it is a coupled model, with 4D data which is even harder to measure in terms of accuracy. Does the fire spread simulation overestimate the reality? The same happens with the atmosphere modelling, is the convection compared with some radar measurements? The authors mention in 311 that pyroconvection was simulated with a good accuracy.

Fuel moisture. It is almost research field itself. I would detail more about it. It is good the number was adjusted, but please add more details about it in addition to the 3 references. The fuel moisture it may be really important to know when pyroconvection could start. I could not repeat the experiments of the authors without the exact values.

Some figures are distorted by stretching.

Active fires from MODIS and VIIRS have footprint. In figure 2 a flame icon is used instead of the footprint.

Summarizing, I am agree with authors that the research efforts should go in that direction. The atmosphere state is a very important value for fire spread modelling. But authors use some sentences that go further. Those statements should be relying on data or deleted. I would like to mention that is a very interesting study case. But please add more details about the parameters used, try to asses somehow the accuracy and be more cautious with some sentences.

I would add some statistical approach for the uncertainty and how the convection is affected varying the inputs. It would add a lot of value depending on the results. For instance create ensembles adding perturbations to:

Initial state of the fuel moistures.

Location and intensity of the initial ignitions.

Assume the uncertainty of the weather values for the init of WRF and use an ensemble approach.

I would limit the statements to the potential conclusions seen in the single run simulation or I would extent the paper. If there is a prove that was convection in this study case (for instance geostationary cloud temperature or fire fighters reports) and your model shows the process at the same time it would be already a hit. But even if matches for this case it does not demonstrate that it would work for every case, specially, without trying to deal with the uncertainty.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his/her comments. We applied all the specifics comments. and the extensive editing.We rewrite the final sections with improvement.The research hasn’t been design to recommend or advance any new or old approach. The review of these sorts have been done extensively in the past by different authors and us as well. The coupled wildfire-atmosphere model has been developed almost three decades ago, Yet it is not operational. The main issue at the operational level is not computational or science restriction. we tried very carefully target the question why it is not operational and show how important it is to get it done. Disaster similar to Fort McMurray happened and we are not using the technology and science which has been available to us long ago.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to congratulate to the authors for the work.

Thanks for positive words

The topic is interesting and is a tough field because of the multidisciplinary knowledge required.

Suggestions to the authors:

To remove English contractions.

we rewrote the last three sections and proof read the manuscripts.

To avoid to sentences without providing data about like 127 "It was also fast and efficient for real-time operational..." It would need to show the traces of the parallel run. Some authorities would run it but with 400 simultaneous wildfires we would need 57600 nodes exclusively for this during fire season. Some wildfires are in convection before the first 6 hours and first it should be detected in a workflow (+3h?).

Line301: while we briefly discussed the achievements in introduction, we have provided more details on the computational resources on line 301. We used west grid resources including  Bugabo, Parallel and Lattice machines (https://www.westgrid.ca) for this research. the 6 hours came as an average of all submitted jobs on the cluster. However we didn’t keep all the record of log files. The number of nodes was different in each machines but non of the jobs were more than 20 nodes, total 144 CPU. These detail are important to IT personal and computer administrator and are very different for each machine. However the 24 hour forecast with 6 hour computation means the computation is 4 times faster than real time, and doesn’t mater how long is the lead time we will able to see it earlier than realtime. For example a 6 hour convection can be predicted in  first 1.5 hours of the fire. 

Additionally University and research computational resources are not the best available one. The choice of 144 cpu was an optimum choice for a quick access.  The speed can be slightly different considering the new computational resources are much faster than our resources.

Usually wildfire spread modelling uses some accuracy analysis, fire perimeters comparison or other factors like fire line intensity etc. In this work, it is a coupled model, with 4D data which is even harder to measure in terms of accuracy. Does the fire spread simulation overestimate the reality? The same happens with the atmosphere modelling, is the convection compared with some radar measurements? The authors mention in 311 that pyroconvection was simulated with a good accuracy.

That is correct and hopefully in future we will have a better observation including radar for evaluation as we discussed in line 338-344. We compared the progress and perimeter of fire with daily perimeter for evaluation 186-194 and 285-297.

Lack of observation didn’t stop meteorologist to continue operational forecasts. It shouldn’t be a barrier for operational atmosphere-wildfire forecast as well. The evaluation is important to improve the models but we know it is important to initiate an operational coupled wildfire forecasts. In Fort MacMurray the fire and its progress could have been seen in its first 6 hours and perhaps that knowledge could change many decisions. 

During the fire most of western NWP models and companies failed in the prediction of temperature and basic atmospheric variables due to lack of coupling and consideration of smoke and the other wildfire forcing. 

Fuel moisture. It is almost research field itself. I would detail more about it. It is good the number was adjusted, but please add more details about it in addition to the 3 references. The fuel moisture it may be really important to know when pyroconvection could start. I could not repeat the experiments of the authors without the exact values.

We can’t agree more. We added a few references for moisture in line 40-44. However fuel moisture is not our focus in this paper. and we haven’t modified the moisture for each fuel class. WRF-fire module has defined the moisture for each fuel class. Kochanski et al. (2012) introduced a simple fuel moisture model in SFIRE (SFIRE is the WRF’s fire module that has been developed at the University of Colorado) that runs independently at each grid point. The fuel moisture model estimates the drying and wetting fuel equilibrium moisture content fire is calculating the fuel moisture itself based on the fuel class. There are new advancement on the assimilation of moisture “Mandel, J., Beezley, J.D., Kochanski, A.K., Kondratenko, V.Y., and Kim, M., 2012. Assimilation of perimeter data and coupling with fuel moisture in a wildland fire – Atmosphere DDDAS, Procedia Comput. Sci. 9. 1100–1109 “. 

We just used the WRF setting for it. The topic deserve a complete research.

What we have done just adjusted the fuel classification according US fuel classes and details are provided in Appendix A for setting the classifications. By the following the instructions and references any one can reproduce the current results and we are happy to help if it is required.

Some figures are distorted by stretching.

Figure 7 is reproduced with a better presentation. We tried to combined 23 images to 12 and show the importance of 4D forecasts. The detailed is clear on the images. If the reviewer provide exact figure number we can review the case.

Active fires from MODIS and VIIRS have footprint. In figure 2 a flame icon is used instead of the footprint. 

The comment is not clear. We plotted the earliest reported hot spots and the other information on a google map to have all the information on one map. and a general outlook of the situation. We used the location reported by MODIS and VIRS but produced the map to have a better view of all important features and geographical locations.

Summarizing, I am agree with authors that the research efforts should go in that direction. The atmosphere state is a very important value for fire spread modelling. But authors use some sentences that go further. Those statements should be relying on data or deleted. I would like to mention that is a very interesting study case. But please add more details about the parameters used, try to asses somehow the accuracy and be more cautious with some sentences.

The comment is not clear. We rewrite the last three sections and hope it is more clear now. The event that we chose were very sensitive events in history and government. We tried to be very conservative with our suggestion. We didn’t want to point our finger to any one. The message is: 1- After three decades of coupled-model innovations, why no forecast centre use them? We know the answer. However we haven’t convinced that the answer is good enough. 

I would add some statistical approach for the uncertainty and how the convection is affected varying the inputs. It would add a lot of value depending on the results. For instance create ensembles adding perturbations to:

Initial state of the fuel moistures.

Any research is a subject for further improvements. The suggestions are very good and valid to improve the research however they are not possible for the current research as the research has no budget or staff for continuing further improvement. It is important to present the importance of the simulation and the results.

Location and intensity of the initial ignitions.

This research was developed with focus on the operational forecast issues. Then we used all we can get in a mock operational  situation. For example we could run the model with more accurate detection or adjusted with all available hotspots for a better premier. However it wouldn’t be a good evaluation of serviceability. We run a model as soon as we have the first detection and let the atmosphere and fire model predict the situation without any nudging.  

Assume the uncertainty of the weather values for the init of WRF and use an ensemble approach.

That is a good suggestion that would be a future work for further accuracy, when we have a history of model performance or ensemble. 

I would limit the statements to the potential conclusions seen in the single run simulation or I would extent the paper. If there is a prove that was convection in this study case (for instance geostationary cloud temperature or fire fighters reports) and your model shows the process at the same time it would be already a hit. But even if matches for this case it does not demonstrate that it would work for every case, specially, without trying to deal with the uncertainty.

Line 293-297: We have no doubt that there was a pyrocumulous cloud via satellite images on May 3rd. We also don’t have doubt the model output is not presenting the real atmosphere and it might not work in some cases (This is a  fact about all models). However there is no doubt the couple models are far better than any 2D forecast and the Fort McMurray is a good example to show why.  

Submission Date

27 May 2020

Date of this review

08 Jun 2020 12:59:47

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors made a good effort and the manuscript has definitely improved. However, the writing is still confusing. 

Major comments
- The writing is still confusing and too 'colloquial', not suitable for a scientific publication. I suggest the authors to ask a native english speaker to review the article before submitting a revised version.
- The PDF contains highlighted text, which I assume refer to the changes made by the authors however the changes are not tracked nor commented and it is difficult for me to track.
- The section 'Results' is a mere list of description of figures and there is not a clear storyline. Discussion of the result is missing.
- The section 'Conclusion' is long and contains details that would not normally be part of this section. Please try to shorten it and focus on how your results support the conclusions.

Minor comments
- Sometimes you call the model WRF fire, other times WRF-fire. Please amend the spelling to be consistent throughout.
- Lines 15-22 This sentence is unclear, please re-word.
- Line 26 Reference needed with regards to land-surface.
- Line 36-37 This sentence is unclear, please re-word.
- Line 79 Please clarify what variable(s) 'annual concentrations' refers to
- Line 84, please clarify what criteria made you choose WRF-Fire.
- Line 90 'It is rather a study on the practically and efficacy of wildfire forecasts'. This sentence is unclear, please re-word.
- Line 176 Please clarify what 'passed later' means in this context or re-word.
- Line 224 please replace 'max' with 'at its maximum'.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors made a good effort and the manuscript has definitely improved. However, the writing is still confusing. 

Major comments

• The writing is still confusing and too 'colloquial', not suitable for a scientific publication. I suggest the authors to ask a native english speaker to review the article before submitting a revised version.
• We have 3 native english speakers proof read the paper and applied the suggested corrections. 

• The PDF contains highlighted text, which I assume refer to the changes made by the authors however the changes are not tracked nor commented and it is difficult for me to track.

    WE couldn’t find any highlights in PDF please let us know if you find it again

• The section 'Results' is a mere list of description of figures and there is not a clear storyline. Discussion of the result is missing.
• The results section is presented all the results with related figures which focus on the 3D properties of the fire. It includes available observation and model outputs.  We organized the figures as the story of fire progressed and provided the story as it was required, lines 223-228, 247-262, In the next section we discussed the story with a different approaches (less detailed) line 307-318, 339-346

• The section 'Conclusion' is long and contains details that would not normally be part of this section. Please try to shorten it and focus on how your results support the conclusions.

    The comment is not clear which part is needed to be shorten or is extra.

Minor comments

• Sometimes you call the model WRF fire, other times WRF-fire. Please amend the spelling to be consistent throughout.
• Line 127 is corrected

• Lines 15-22 This sentence is unclear, please re-word.
• Has been rephrased 
•  
• Line 26 Reference needed with regards to land-surface.

    Line 26 It is amended

• Line 36-37 This sentence is unclear, please re-word.
• “One of the areas that require investigation is understanding the transition of a wildfire to a large fire with high intensity, spread and burned area.” changed to “One of the areas that require investigation is the transition of a wildfire to a large fire with high intensity, spread and burned area. “
  
  
• Line 79 Please clarify what variable(s) 'annual concentrations' refers to

Line 79 the NH3 is added.

• Line 84, please clarify what criteria made you choose WRF-Fire.
• The discussion is too long for this paper. We have provided a review paper on why we chose WRF-FIRE 
• Bakhshaii, A.; Johnson, E. A review of a new generation of wildfire−atmosphere modeling. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 2019, 49, 565–574. doi:10.1139/cjfr-2018-0138.

• Line 90 'It is rather a study on the practically and efficacy of wildfire forecasts'. This sentence is unclear, please re-word.
• Line 90 The sentence is rephrased to “It is rather an application and a study on the practically and efficacy of wildfire forecasts. “

• Line 176 Please clarify what 'passed later' means in this context or re-word.

Line 176 corrected to passed after MODIS

- Line 224 please replace 'max' with 'at its maximum'.

The suggestion is added

Author Response File: Author Response.doc