Research in Fire/Atmospheric Science

Ronan Paugam

About Me

placeholder Since 2008, I have been active in fire science on both active fire monitoring and fire-plume modelling. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at CERTEC at the Universitat de Cataluna (UPC) in Barcelona. I joined CERTEC in 2020 with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie H2020 Fellowship program. Before during the period 2019-2020, I worked in France: 1 year at CERFACS in Toulouse (France) with Dr Mélanie ROCHOUX and a short project of 5 months at the University of Corte with Dr Jean-Baptiste Filippi. Prior to that, I had a 10 years experience abroad. Before coming back to France, I was a visiting scholar of the University of Washington for 2 years (2016-2018) working with Dr William MELL at the US Forest Service Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab (PWSL) in Seattle (USA), and a postdoctoral researcher for 8 years (2008-2015) in the Department of Geography of Kings College London (KCL, UK) with Prof. Martin WOOSTER. I performed my PhD in France at CERFACS from 2005 to 2008 on the subject of contrail interaction with atmospheric turbulence under the supervision of Dr Daniel CARIOLLE and Dr Roberto PAOLI.

My CV is available here.

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    • Research Achievement and Interest

    My main scientific product achievement so far is the development of a parameterization for fire plume injection height which is now running operationally in the IFS model of ECMWF and was delivered in 2015 in the framework of the MACC project (see here for an overview of the work).

    In 2015 while still at KCL I initiated the development of a simulation strategy for the modelling of energy transfer in large-scale fire plume within a project supported by the European Space Agency (ESA). The end objective of this work that I have been continuing since then, during my time at PWSL and CERFACS, is to help improving Earth Observation active fire remote sensing products by creating a simulation tool (i.e. a virtual fire laboratory) capable to study energy transfer (in particular radiative transfer) in large-scale fire scene. In this work, I am particularly interested in designing and conducting fieldwork campaign (see here data from a fieldwork conducted in Kruger National Park in 2014), integrating fire radiation measurement from prescribed burn into atmospheric meso-scale model (see example of plume simulation here, and in fine generating realistic fire scene for radiative transfer model.

    My Publications

    Peer-reviewed publications:

    1. Planas E., Paugam R., Àgueda A., Vacca P., Pastor E., 2023, Fires at the wildland-industrial interface. Is there an emerging problem?, Fire Safety Journal, Volume 141. link
    2. Paugam, R., Martin J. Wooster, William E. Mell, Mélanie C. Rochoux, Jean-Baptiste Filippi, Gernot Rücker, Olaf Frauenberger, Eckehard Lorenz, Wilfrid Schroeder, Bruce Main, and Navashni Govender. 2021. “Orthorectification of Helicopter-Borne High Resolution Experimental Burn Observation from Infra Red Handheld Imagers” Remote Sensing 13, no. 23: 4913. link
    3. Evangeliou, N., Kylling, A., Eckhardt, S., Myroniuk, V., Stebel, K., Paugam, R., Zibtsev, S., and Stohl, A.: Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19, 1393-1411, 2019. link
    4. Andela, N., Morton, D. C., Giglio, L., Paugam, R., Chen, Y., Hantson, S., van der Werf, G. R., and Randerson, J. T.: The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed, and direction, Earth System Science Data 11 (2), 529-552, 2019. link
    5. Liu Y., Kochanski A., Baker K. R., Mell W., Linn R., Paugam R., Mandel J., Fournier A., Jenkins M. A., Goodrick S., Achtemeier G., Zhao F., Ottmar R., French N. H. F., Larkin N., Brown T., Hudak A., Dickinson M., Potter B., Clements C., Urbanski S., Prichard S., Watts A., McNamara D.: Fire behaviour and smoke modelling: model improvement and measurement needs for next-generation smoke research and forecasting systems. International Journal of Wildland Fire 28, 570-588, 2019. link
    6. Johnston J.M., Wheatley M.J., Wooster M.J., Paugam R., Davies G.M., DeBoer K.A.: Flame-Front Rate of Spread Estimates for Moderate Scale Experimental Fires Are Strongly Influenced by Measurement Approach. Fire, 1, 16, 2018. link
    7. Sauvage, B., Fontaine, A., Eckhardt, S., Auby, A., Boulanger, D., Petetin, H., Paugam, R., Athier, G., Cousin, J.-M., Darras, S., Nédélec, P., Stohl, A., Turquety, S., Cammas, J.-P., and Thouret, V.: Source attribution using FLEXPART and carbon monoxide emission inventories: SOFT-IO version 1.0, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 15271-15292, 2017. link
    8. Johnston J. M., Wooster M. J., Paugam R., Wang X., Lynham T. J., Johnston L. M.: Direct estimation of Byram’s fire intensity from infrared remote sensing imagery. International Journal of Wildland Fire 26, 668-684, 2017.link
    9. Rémy, S., Veira, A., Paugam, R., Sofiev, M., Kaiser, J. W., Marenco, F., Burton, S. P., Benedetti, A., Engelen, R. J., Ferrare, R., and Hair, J. W.: Two global data sets of daily fire emission injection heights since 2003, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 2921-2942, doi:10.5194/acp-17-2921-2017, 2017. link
    10. Evangeliou, Nikolaos; Zibtsev, S.; Myroniuk, V.; Zhurba, M.; Hamburger, Thomas; Stohl, Andreas; Balkanski, Y.; Paugam, R.; Mousseau, T.A.; Møller, A.P.; Kireev, S.I.: Resuspension and atmospheric transport of radionuclides due to wildfires near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2015: An impact assessment. Scientific Reports, Nature, doi:10.1038/srep26062, 2016. link
    11. Paugam, R., Wooster, M., Freitas, S., and Val Martin, M.: A review of approaches to estimate wildfire plume injection height within large-scale atmospheric chemical transport models, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 907-925, doi:10.5194/acp-16-907-2016, 2016. link
    12. Paugam, R., Wooster, M., Atherton, J., Freitas, S. R., Schultz, M. G., and Kaiser, J. W.: Development and optimization of a wildfire plume rise model based on remote sensing data inputs -Part 2, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 15, 9815-9895, doi:10.5194/acpd-15-9815-2015, 2015. [still in review for acp in Sep 2015] link
    13. Gonzi, S., Palmer, P. I., Paugam, R., Wooster, M., and Deeter, M. N.: Quantifying pyroconvective injection heights using observations of fire energy: sensitivity of spaceborne observations of carbon monoxide, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 4339-4355, doi:10.5194/acp-15-4339-2015, 2015. link
    14. N. Evangeliou, Y. Balkanski, A. Cozic, W. M. Hao, F. Mouillot, K. Thonicke, R. Paugam, S. Zibtsev, T. A. Mousseau, R. Wang, B. Poulter, A. Petkov, C. Yue, P. Cadule, B. Koffi, J. W. Kaiser, and A. P. Møller. Fire evolution in the radioactive forests of Ukraine and Belarus: future risks for the population and the environment. Ecological Monographs 85:49-72. 2015 link
    15. Paugam R., Wooster, M. J. and Roberts, G,: Use of Handheld Thermal Imager Data for Airborne Mapping of Fire Radiative Power and Energy and Flame Front Rate of Spread, Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on , vol.51, no.6, pp.3385,3399, 2013 link
    16. Rochoux, M. C., Cuenot, B., Ricci, S., Trouve, A., Delmotte, B., Massart, S., Paoli, R. & Paugam, R.: Data assimilation applied to combustion, COMPTES RENDUS MECANIQUE. 341, 1-2, p. 266-276 11 p., DOI: 10.1016/j.crme.2012.10.011 , 2013. link
    17. Val Martin, M., R. A. Kahn, J. A. Logan, R. Paugam, M. Wooster, and C. Ichoku: Space-based observational constraints for 1-D fire smoke plume-rise models, J. Geophys. Res., 117, D22204, 2012. link
    18. Paugam R. , R. Paoli, and D. Cariolle: Influence of vortex dynamics and atmospheric turbulence on the early evolution of a contrail, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 10, pp. 3933-3952, 2010. link
    19. D. Cariolle, D. Caro, R. Paoli, D. Hauglustaine, B. Cuenot, A. Cozic, and R. Paugam: Introduction of non-linear plume chemistry into large scale atmospheric models: application to aircraft emissions, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 114, D19302, 2009. link

    Referenced conference publications:

    Main Conference Abstracts