Grenland Energy (Norway)

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Firefighter entrapments occur when wildfires suddenly transition into extreme wildfire events (EWEs). These transitions are often caused by pyroconvective fire-atmosphere coupling, triggered by a combination of high fire intensity and atmospheric vertical thermodynamic structure. Pyroconvection indices calculated using coarse atmospheric modeling data crudely detect these dynamic transitions due to highly localized atmospheric processes and changes in atmospheric conditions caused by the fire. Consequently, fire managers may remain unaware that fire behavior intensification due to fire-atmosphere coupling is outdating the safety protocols in place. This study presents a new in-plume profiling methodology to improve the assessment of fire-atmosphere interaction dynamics in real-time. As proof of concept, we analyzed 156 in-plume sondes launched during the 2021&ndash;2025 fire seasons in Spain, Chile, Greece, and The Netherlands. As a strategy to measure the coupling fire-atmosphere, we propose simultaneously launching two radiosondes: one to measure ambient conditions and another to capture data within the plume updraft. Comparing these profiles, we measure in-situ and in-real time the modification of state variables by the fire-atmosphere interaction. These new observations and methodology improve our assessment of pyroconvection dynamics demonstrating practical implications that support their use by incident management teams. It has the potential to enhance awareness of possible near-accidents and tactical failures during extreme pyroconvective wildfire events. Additionally, it offers a comprehensive observational dataset to improve pyroconvection nowcasting and advance research on fire-atmosphere interaction.

Abstract The true structure of alternating conjugated polymers—the state‐of‐the‐art materials for many organic electronics—often deviates from the idealized picture. Homocoupling defects are in fact inherent to the widely used cross‐coupling polymerization methods. Nevertheless, many polymers still perform excellently in the envisaged applications, which raises the question if one should really care about these imperfections. This article looks at the relevance of chemical precision (and lack thereof) in conjugated polymers covering the entire spectrum from the molecular scale, to the micro and mesostructure, up to the device level. The different types of polymerization errors for the alkoxylated variant of the benchmark (semi)crystalline polymer poly[2,5‐bis(3‐tetradecylthiophen‐2‐yl)thieno[3,2‐b]thiophene (PBTTT) are identified, visualized, and quantified and a general strategy to avoid homocoupling is introduced. Through a combination of experiments and supported by simulations, it is shown that these coupling defects hinder fullerene intercalation and limit device performance as compared to the homocoupling‐free analog. This clearly demonstrates that structural defects do matter and should be generally avoided, in particular when the geometrical regularity of the polymer is essential. These insights likely go beyond the specific PBTTT derivatives studied here and are of general relevance for the wider organic electronics field.