{"id":52004,"date":"2026-06-15T00:10:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T05:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nelson.wisc.edu\/the-commons\/?p=52004"},"modified":"2026-06-15T07:24:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T12:24:31","slug":"understanding-fires-climate-feedbacks-min-chen-wildfire-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nelson.wisc.edu\/the-commons\/understanding-fires-climate-feedbacks-min-chen-wildfire-predictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Fire\u2019s Climate Feedbacks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"drop-cap wp-block-paragraph\">Wildfires are becoming more frequent and severe across many regions of the world, reshaping ecosystems and influencing the global climate in complex ways. A new research <a href=\"https:\/\/pamspublic.science.energy.gov\/WebPAMSExternal\/Interface\/Common\/ViewPublicAbstract.aspx?rv=065930bd-3313-4bc7-a527-678a110ccf84&amp;rtc=24&amp;PRoleId=10\">project<\/a> led by Min Chen, assistant professor within the Nelson Institute\u2019s Center for Climatic Research (CCR) and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, aims to improve scientists\u2019 understanding of how wildfires affect interactions between land, water, energy, and the atmosphere \u2014 and how those changes are represented in climate models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The project, <em>Understand and Reduce Uncertainty in E3SM\u2019s Land-Atmosphere Feedbacks on Carbon, Water, and Energy in Response to Wildfire Disturbance<\/em>, will work to improve the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s Exascale Energy Earth System Model (E3SM), an advanced tool used to simulate climate and ecosystem processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"720\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1280 \/ 720;\" width=\"1280\" autoplay controls loop muted src=\"https:\/\/nelson.wisc.edu\/the-commons\/wp-content\/uploads\/CanadianWildfires2023_SmokeIntensity_short_v02_1920x1080-2.mp4\" playsinline><\/video><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Smoke from Canada\u2019s 2023 wildfires spread across North America. Tan to deep red colors show smoke intensity, estimated from black carbon in NASA\u2019s GEOS-FP model.\nVideo courtesy of NASA&#8217;s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) and NASA&#8217;s Global Modeling Assimilation Office (GMAO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Current Earth System Models often struggle to accurately capture wildfire behavior and the long-term effects fires have on terrestrial ecosystems and atmospheric systems. To address these gaps, Chen and his team will develop new benchmarking metrics for land-atmosphere feedbacks and integrate them into the International Land Model Benchmarking framework. The project will also apply machine learning and surrogate modeling techniques to improve wildfire simulations and reduce uncertainty in predictions of post-fire ecosystem resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By advancing wildfire and climate modeling, the research will support more effective climate mitigation and adaptation strategies in a warming world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new project led by Min Chen will use machine learning and advanced climate modeling to reduce uncertainty in wildfire predictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":52177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[44,58,34],"tags":[47,40,70],"post_template":[57],"class_list":["post-52004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","category-tech","category-water","tag-abstracts","tag-secondary","tag-summer-2026","post_template-vertical-hero-template"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Understanding Fire\u2019s Climate Feedbacks | The Commons Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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