HR: 11:30h
AN: A11I-05 INVITED     [PDF]
TI: Modeling the transport of emissions from boreal forest fires - a review
AU: * Stohl, A
EM: astohl@al.noaa.gov
AF: Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) University of Colorado/NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, R/AL4, room 2A101 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Damoah, R
AF: Technical University of Munich, Am Hochanger 13, Freising, 85354 Germany
AU: Forster, C
AF: Technical University of Munich, Am Hochanger 13, Freising, 85354 Germany
AU: Spichtinger, N
AF: Technical University of Munich, Am Hochanger 13, Freising, 85354 Germany
AU: Trainer, M
AF: NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, R/AL4 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AB: During the last few years, evidence has accumulated that boreal forest fires emitting huge amounts of aerosols and trace gases can have a great impact on the concentrations of these species far away from the location of the burning, both in the troposphere and stratosphere.In the first part of this talk, a brief overview of the highlights of model-supported case studies of the long-range transport of boreal forest fire emissions will be given.For instance, it is now known that Canadian forest fire emissions can impact photochemical ozone formation in the southeastern United States, aerosols, CO and ozone from Canadian boreal fires can be transported all the way to Europe, transport of emissions into the stratosphere occurs, spectacular global transport events resulted from fires in Siberia in 2003, and strong burning seasons can strongly affect the chemical composition of the entire northern hemisphere troposphere.In the second part of the talk, factors will be reviewed that are critical for a successful simulation of the transport of boreal forest fire emissions and that limit the accuracy of transport models. These factors include the availability of suitable data to locate fires, estimate emission strengths and effective emission injection height, and the critical issue of convection above the fires. Convection can sometimes be enhanced or triggered over the fires due to the extra buoyancy created by the fires themselves as well as radiative processes. While very few dynamic models are available to simulate these processes on the local scale, global models normally do not include them at all, and in fact still have problems simulating small-scale (but possibly very deep) convection even if not triggered by fire.Improvements are needed in this respect, especially for quantifying the transport of emissions to the stratosphere.
DE: 0365 Troposphere--composition and chemistry
DE: 0368 Troposphere--constituent transport and chemistry
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting