HR: 12:05h
AN: A11I-07    [PDF]
TI: Using MOPITT data and a Chemistry and Transport Model to Investigate Injection Height of Plumes from Boreal Forest Fires
AU: * Hyer, E J
EM: ehyer@geog.umd.edu
AF: Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 United States
AU: Allen, D J
EM: allen@atmos.umd.edu
AF: Department of Meteorology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 United States
AU: Kasischke, E S
EM: kk169@umail.umd.edu
AF: Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 United States
AU: Warner, J X
EM: juying@ucar.edu
AF: MOPITT Science Team, UCAR 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AB: Trace gas emissions from boreal forest fires are a significant factor in atmospheric composition and its interannual variability. A number of recent observations of emissions plumes above individual fire events (Fromm and Servranckx, 2003; COBRA 2003; Lamarque et al., 2003; Wotawa and Trainer, 2000) suggest that vertical properties of forest fire emission plumes can be very different from fossil fuel emission plumes. Understanding and constraining the vertical properties of forest fire emission plumes and their injection into the atmosphere during fire events is critical for accurate modeling of atmospheric transport and chemistry. While excellent data have been collected in a handful of experiments on individual fire events, a systematic examination of the range of behavior observed in fire events has been hampered by the scarcity of vertical profiles of atmospheric composition. In this study, we used a high-resolution model of boreal forest fire emissions (Kasischke et al, in review) as input to the Goddard/UM CTM driven by the GEOS-3 DAS, operating at 2 by 2.5 degrees with 35 vertical levels. We modeled atmospheric injection and transport of CO emissions during the fire season of 2000 (May-September). We altered the parameters of the model to simulate a range of scenarios of plume injection, and compared the resulting output to the CO profiles from the MOPITT instrument. The results presented here pertain to the boreal forest, but our methods should be useful for atmospheric modelers hoping to more realistically model transport of emission plumes from biomass burning. References: COBRA2003: see http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cobra/smoke_canada_030530.pdf Fromm, M. and R. Servranckx, 2003. "Stratospheric Injection of Forest Fire Emissions on August 4, 1998: A Satellite Image Analysis of the Causal Supercell Convection." Geophysical Research Abstracts 5:13118. Kasischke, E.S.; E.J. Hyer, N.H.F. French, A.I. Sukhinin, J.H. Hewson, B.J. Stocks, in review. "Carbon Emissions from Boreal Forest Fires - 1996 to 2002." Lamarque, J.-F., D.P. Edwards, L.K. Emmons, J.C. Gille, O. Wilhelmi, C. Gerbig, D. Prevedel, M.N. Deeter, J.X. Warner, D.C. Ziskin, B. Khattatov, G.L. Francis, V. Yudin, S. Ho, D. Mao, J. Chen, J.R. Drummond. "Identification of CO plumes from MOPITT data: Application to the August 2000 Idaho-Montana forest fires." Geophysical Research Letters 30(13):1688, doi:10.1029/2003GL017503. Wotawa, G. and M. Trainer. "The influence of Canadian Forest Fires on Pollutant Concentrations in the United States." Science 288:324-328.
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions
DE: 0322 Constituent sources and sinks
DE: 0368 Troposphere--constituent transport and chemistry
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting