AFFILIATIONS: PETERSON—National Research Council, Washington, D.C., and Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, California; HYER AND CAMPBELL—Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, California; FROMM—Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.; HAIR—NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia; BUTLER AND FENN—Science Systems and Applications Inc., and Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: David Peterson, National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, Naval Research Laboratory, 7 Grace Hopper Avenue, Monterey, CA 93943 E-mail: david.peterson.ctr@nrlmry.navy.mil The abstract for this article can be found in this issue, following the table of contents. DOI:10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00060.1 In final form 16 October 2014 ©2015 American Meteorological Society One of the largest wildfires in California’s history provides a unique opportunity to examine the meteorology driving extreme fire behavior and its impact on smoke plume altitude and downwind transport. THE 2013 RIM FIRE Implications for Predicting Extreme Fire Spread, Pyroconvection, and Smoke Emissions BY DAVID A. PETERSON, EDWARD J. HYER, JAMES R. CAMPBELL, MICHAEL D. FROMM, JOHNATHAN W. HAIR, CAROLYN F. BUTLER, AND MARTA A. FENN A n illegal campfire ignited the Rim Fire on 17 August 2013 in the Stanislaus National Forest region of the Sierra Nevada. The Rim Fire even- tually became the third largest wildfire in California history, burning more than 104,000 ha (http://cdf- data.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_statsevents). This includes 30,000 ha in Yosemite National Park (Kirn and Dickman 2013), where the power and water supply to the San Francisco Bay Area became en- dangered. While old fire scars and prescribed burns reduced the fuel load in a portion of the region (e.g., Johnson et al. 2013), other sections had experienced substantial fuel accumulation resulting from many years of fire suppression activity. The combination of topography, remoteness, and meteorological conditions contributed to the 1.5-month lifetime of the fire, marked by occasional rapid fire spread and significant variations in smoke plume physical characteristics. These topics serve as motivation for this article, which provides a comprehensive over- view, focusing on the most extreme fire behavior, its atmospheric interaction, and the efficacy of specific parameters for improving predictive capabilities in North America. Large wildfire events similar to the Rim Fire are an increasingly common threat to life and property across the western United States (e.g., Westerling et al. 2006; Dennison et al. 2014). In addition, aerosol and trace gas production, by-products of wildfire activ- ity, are increasingly recognized as threats to regional air quality, visibility, and even global climate (e.g., Randerson et al. 2006; Spracklen et al. 2007; Salinas et al. 2013; Val Martin et al. 2013). As a result, several near-real-time global and regional smoke forecasting applications have been developed to support decision making by civil authorities. Examples of this include 229 FEBRUARY 2015 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY |