HR: 0800h
AN: A21B-0862    [Abstracts]
TI: Importance of Peat Burning and Injection Heights in Boreal Fire Emissions: Evaluation With MOPITT Satellite Observations for the Summer 2004
AU: * Turquety, S
EM: stu@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Jacob, D J
EM: djj@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Hudman, R C
EM: rch@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Logan, J A
EM: jal@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Yevich, R M
EM: rmy@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Leung, F
EM: fyl@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Yantosca, R M
EM: bmy@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Heald, C L
EM: clh@io.harvard.edu
AF: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138-2901 United States
AU: Emmons, L K
EM: emmons@ucar.edu
AF: Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Dr., Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Edwards, D P
EM: edwards@ucar.edu
AF: Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Dr., Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AB: The summer of 2004 was one of the strongest fire seasons on record for Alaska and western Canada. We present a daily process-based fire emission inventory for that season, including consideration of peat burning and high-altitude (buoyant) injection, and evaluate it in a global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem CTM) simulation of CO through comparison with MOPITT satellite and ICARTT aircraft observations. The inventory is constructed by combining daily area burned reports and MODIS fire hotspots with average estimates of fuel consumption and emission factors based on ecosystem type, and partitioning emissions between crown and surface fires, and the burning of the ground-layer organic matter. We estimate the contribution from peat burning using drainage and peat distribution maps for Alaska and Canada. According to these maps, more than 20% of the reported 5.1 million hectares burned during the summer 2004 were located in peatlands. We show that the associated burning could have a large contribution, increasing the emissions of CO from about 19 Tg CO (if only above-ground burning is considered) to more than 28 Tg CO. Our GEOS-Chem simulation shows that including emissions from peat burning improves the agreement between simulated and observed CO, and suggests that peat becomes more combustible as the season progresses. Model comparisons to observations are very sensitive to the altitude of injection of the fire emissions in the CTM, highlighting the importance of considering pyro-convective events when simulating fire influences or using atmospheric observations of trace gases as top-down constraints on fire emissions.
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0322 Constituent sources and sinks
DE: 0325 Evolution of the atmosphere (1610, 8125)
DE: 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry
DE: 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005