BOREAS: Hourly Surface Weather for Boreal Forest Fire Research

Eighteen meteorological stations across Saskatchewan recorded hourly surface weather data during the boreal forest fire seasons of 1994 and 1995. Parameters include temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, wind speed, and precipitation. This data was archived by the Saskatchewan Forest Fire Control Centre and contributed to the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS).

Use Cases

• Calibrating forest fire spread models based on hourly wind speed and direction.
• Analyzing the relationship between precipitation events and fire season intensity in the boreal forest.
• Studying diurnal temperature and humidity cycles during summer months in Saskatchewan.
• Validating regional climate model outputs against observed surface meteorological station data.

Strengths

• Data originates from 18 distinct meteorological stations, providing spatial coverage across Saskatchewan.
• Covers two consecutive fire seasons (1994 and 1995) with hourly temporal resolution.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA and government data portals indicates established scientific use.

Limitations

• Metadata conflict: one source lists a last update in 2026, while another indicates the data itself is from 1995, suggesting potential stale core data with updated metadata.
• Specific column names and the exact data file structure are not described in the provided metadata.
• The license is ambiguously described as 'other-license-specified' without clear terms.

Provenance

Source

Saskatchewan Forest Fire Control Centre (SFFCC) archive, provided to NASA's BOREAS project.

Collection Method

Likely collected via automated meteorological stations.

Time Range

May through September of 1994 and 1995.

Freshness

2026-03-13 12:23:47.484778 (metadata update); core data from 1994-1995.

Geography

Saskatchewan, Canada.