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Under the nuclear winter scenario, large wildland fires are expected to contribute to a general smoke plume and are considered potential analogues for the behavior of gigantic palls. As a means of testing the reasonableness of current estimates of a wildland fire contribution, the authors reconstructed from the historic record two major events; the Tillamook Burn of August 1933 and the 1910 fire complex in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Both events are near the upper limit for wildland fires - the Tillamook Burn for a single fire. For the 1910 fires, for which environmental data are skimpy, a modern analogue, the Sundance fire (1967), was used for certain extrapolations. Reconstructed fire behavior and estimated smoke production suggest that current nuclear winter models overestimate the magnitude of a wildland component.
Cataloging Information
- large fires
- Tillamook burn