Lightning strikes are one of the main drivers of wildfire in the state, according to the Alaska Fire Service. They sparked most of the fires that swept across the Interior at the peak of this year’s fire season, burning thousands of acres and dozens of structures.
But seasonal wildland fire outlooks usually donโt factor in lightning because local lightning forecasts are difficult and time-consuming to put together. A group of researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is now working to remedy that using machine learning. Josh Hostler, a PhD student at UAF, heads the lightning modeling project.
He said training AI to look at weather conditions can help estimate the likelihood of extreme lightning events over a season. โWe tell it what patterns occur on each day, and we have it predict categories of lightning intensity for that day,โ Hostler said. โThen we give it a low, medium, and high category.โ
