HR: 09:40h
AN: A31C-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Smoking Pyrocumulonimbus: analysis of a major Canadian boreal fire blowup from satellite and ground measurements
AU: * Stocks, B J
EM: bstocks@nrcan.gc.ca
AF: Canadian Forest Service, 1219 Queen Street East, Sault Ste. Marie, ON P6A 2E5 Canada
AU: Fromm, M
EM: mike.fromm@nrl.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Laboratory, 4666 Overlook Ave SW, Washington, DC 20375 United States
AU: Servranckx, R
EM: rene.servranckx@ec.gc.ca
AF: Canadian Meteorological Centre, 2121 North Service Road Trans-Canada Highway, Dorval, QC H9P 1J3 Canada
AU: Miller, S
EM: miller@nrlmry.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Laboratory, 7 Grace Hopper Ave, Monterey, CA 93943 United States
AU: Turk, J
EM: turk@nrlmry.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Laboratory, 7 Grace Hopper Ave, Monterey, CA 93943 United States
AU: Diner, D
EM: djd@jord.jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AB: On 17 August 2003 a high-intensity forest fire close to the border of northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories in northwestern Canada exploded into a pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb for short). PyroCb have in recent years been confirmed as an agent for transport of biomass burning emissions deeply into the lower stratosphere. The blowup was spawned by the Conibear Lake Fire, burning in the Wood Buffalo National Park (the largest boreal park in the world), where large fires are common/natural and seldom suppressed directly. The Conibear Lake Fire pyroCb created a plume of smoke that, on 18 August, was an optically opaque plume spanning from the lower troposphere to the lower stratosphere. A remarkable distinction of the pyroCb was that it grew to convective maturity during midday, enabling four true-color sensors (SeaWiFS, MISR, Terra MODIS, and Aqua MODIS) to observe the growth and spread of the tropopause-level anvil-and the anvil was smoky in color throughout. In this paper we will give a multiple nadir-viewer description of the entire life cycle of this pyroconvection. In addition to the unique smoky composition of the mature pyroCb, we will show the fire hot spot evolution, the cloud-top changes in terms of IR brightness temperature, an analysis of the cloud top altitude, and the deposition/advection of the smoke pall during and after convection. We will complement the satellite analysis with several ground-based indicators of fuel consumption, spread rates, energy release rates, and convection column dynamics that support the satellite observations of the pyroCb development.
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions (0426, 1610)
DE: 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005