David Peterson, a self-described weather nerd since he was a kid, is leading a multi-year national research project into wildfire-generated thunderstorms, with a component based out of Great Falls.

Peterson studied meteorology in college and when new satellites came online around 2005 that gave a good view if wildfires from space, he came across what’s known as pyrocumulonumbus storms, or pyroCBs.

He thought, “why not” study it and wanted to learn what drives pyroconvection, which leads to pyroCBs.

Weather data included in a study at the time didn’t make sense, piquing his interest in the idea that “fire can modify the atmosphere,” where conditions may not be favorable for thunderstorms, but fire and smoke could change atmospheric conditions.

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It’s a pretty new area of study in meteorology, Peterson said, that’s having a moment a bit like the study of supercells did in the 1990s when the movie Twister was released.

Now, he works at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and leads the research project INjected Smoke and PYRocumulonimbus Experiment, INSPYRE, with NASA.

The project goal is to better understand wildfire-generated thunderstorms, or pyroCBs, and the hazards they create for firefighting operations, aviation, weather forecasting and national security, according to NRL.

The INSPYRE project is like a “well-organized storm chase,” Peterson said in a phone interview with The Electric.

The project is using a Lockheed ER-2 Earth Resources high-altitude NASA aircraft, based out of Great Falls and a Gulfstream V, based out of Colorado, that is flying into the storms to conduct sampling directly inside pyroCb plumes.

The ER-2 has been in Great Falls for a few weeks.

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It’s not a U-2, nor is it a spy plane.

NASA hasn’t used a U-2 for its research missions since 1989.

The project is studying wildfire-driven storms across the Western U.S. and into parts of Canada.

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Peterson told The Electric that intense wildfires can generate their own thunderstorms, which have impacts near the fire and smoke can reach far downwind.

The INSPYRE project is looking at what’s generating these storms, which fires produce pyroCBS and why.

“There’s still some very basic questions to answer there, and how does the atmosphere contribute to that,” Peterson said.

“It’s a poorly understood form of weather,” he said, generally and compared to supercells that produce tornadoes.

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The INSPYRE project is the first step in understanding what’s driving pyroCBs, Peterson said, which will help improve forecasting.

“None of our weather forecast models allow us to account for smoke,” Peterson said. “We’re trying to solve this prediction gap. It’s important to know where smoke is at different altitudes.”

If the layer of smoke from large wildfires is altering light absorption or cooling the atmosphere, there could be secondary effects, he said.

Large wildfires generate a lot of heat, which creates a bubble of rising air and, under certain conditions, a layer of moisture above the fire accumulates and condenses, creating pyroCBs.

It’s similar to a chimney, he said, with air accelerated into that column, and the fire pulls in more air, essentially feeding itself. It can create erratic wind, fire tornadoes and lightning, which might trigger more fires downwind.

Smoke released by the fire can be pulled rapidly into the atmosphere and move quickly through it. In some situations, so much smoke is pushed up so fast that it rivals volcanic eruptions, Peterson said.

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Recent discoveries found that the smoke plume from 2017 Canadian wildfires traveled around the world and lingered for a year; in 2020, the plume was three times larger and persisted for a year and a half.

Those discoveries, in part, inspired this summer’s INSPYRE mission, Peterson said, because “we don’t know enough about the smoke at those altitudes” and how it changes as it’s pushed through a cloud.

Volcanic eruptions can have a cooling effect since the ash blocks the sun, but with smoke, Peterson said they don’t know the size of the smoke particles and how much sunlight they absorb or reflect. Those are questions the INSPYRE researchers hope to answer.

The project includes two aircraft, a ground team and a forecast team.

NASA’s ER-2, based in Great Falls this summer, flies at about 65,000 feet, almost twice the altitude of a large commercial aircraft, with one pilot in a spacesuit and a suite of instruments similar to those used in space.

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Equipment on the aircraft captures high-resolution images of the fire as it passes over the fire repeatedly so researchers can see where it is, hot spots and how it’s spreading.

Radar and other instruments look at the smoke plume, air dynamics, and the electric field, which relates to lightning.

The other aircraft, a Gulfstream 5, operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is based in Colorado for the INSPYRE project, as is Peterson.

It’s a smaller jet with instrument racks that can carry passengers and flies through the clouds and smoke to get direct measurements by pulling in air to analyze.

Their research is most powerful, Peterson said, when the ER-5 flies directly above the Gulfstream, and scientists can layer those measurements.

The team did two flights in Montana on Aug. 12 with the ER-2 above the Gulfstream at the Sand Creek Fire, which is currently burning about 31,667 acres in Beaverhead County.

The INSPYRE mission is headquartered in Colorado with a forecast team keeping track of fires across the western U.S. and Canada, looking at the fuels they’re burning, whether they’re contained and the atmospheric conditions above them.

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The forecast team is using some experimental products in forecasting the storms, but also developing new tools since one of the project goals is to use data collected from the airborne instruments to improve weather prediction tools, Peterson said.

Each morning, the team digests the entire scope of fires burning in the western region, which is “a lot of fires right now” to determine which are likely to generate fire convection and narrow it down from there to determine where to fly, Peterson said.

Researchers used a database of pyroCB events worldwide since 2013 to identify which areas generate more fire convection and the time of year with the most wildfire activity.

Great Falls is well positioned, Peterson said, since the ER-2 can fly south to Colorado and north to Canada, covering a large area of wildfire activity.

Ground monitoring is led out of Reno, Nev., with a truck-mounted radar and lidar, similar to storm chasers, Peterson said.

The ground team works with incident commanders and is certified to enter fire incident areas to collect data.

If they find fires with ground access, they’ll go in, and the aircraft teams will join them in the area to have a view of the fire from the ground all the way to 65,000 feet.

Ground monitoring can be challenging to move around terrain, but in some cases, those instruments can pick up data for areas that the aircraft can’t observe.

The best way to observe wildfires has been from space, but the INSPYRE project will observe the fires from an unprecedented level, allowing the research team to validate and calibrate the satellite technology they have, Peterson said. Groups that monitor fire spread will also be able to use the data to validate how well their prediction models are working.

The INSPYRE team includes more than 150 people and a variety of federal agencies, universities and other wildfire-related entities.

For 2026, the team is flying and taking measurements through Sept. 10.

The plan is to do another deployment next summer with the ER-2 but those details are in the works, with the aircraft potentially returning to Great Falls, Peterson said.

Analysis starts immediately, with researchers looking at the data on days the team isn’t flying, and once this summer’s deployment ends, they’ll do a deeper review that will also inform their plans for next summer.

It will likely be a few more years of analysis before their findings are published.

*NASA photos