Wildfire smoke plumes transport under a subsidence inversion: Climate and health implications in a distant urban area

Several events were studied to examine the sources of smoke and pollutants that may affect air quality in Ontario as well as the transport mechanisms that result in effects on ground-level air quality. The selected events were strongly suspected of being influenced by forest fire smoke plumes and the evaluation of the events in this study confirmed (to a high degree of confidence) that smoke made a contribution to the measured pollutants. The main satellite-based remote-sensing product that correlated well with wildfire smoke plumes was carbon monoxide column amount.

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Of Fire and Smoke Plumes, Polarimetric Characteristics

10.20944/preprints202001.0005.v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Dusan Zrnic ◽

Pengfei Zhang ◽

Valery Melnikov ◽

Djordje Mirkovic

Keyword(s):

Urban Area ◽

Forest Fire ◽

Computational Electromagnetics ◽

Weather Radar ◽

Doppler Weather Radar ◽

National Weather Service ◽

Weather Radars ◽

Wild Fire ◽

Smoke Plumes ◽

The Usa

Weather surveillance radars routinely detect smoke of various origin. Of particular significance to the meteorological community are wildfires in forests and/or prairies. For example, one responsibility of the National Weather Service in the USA is to forecast fire outlooks as well as to monitor wild fire evolution. Polarimetric variables have enabled relatively easy recognitions of smoke plumes in data fields of weather radars. Presented here are the fields of these variables from smoke plumes caused by grass fire, brush fire, and forest fire. Histograms of polarimetric data from plumes contrast these three cases. Most of the data are from the polarimetric Weather Surveillance Radar 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D aka Nexrad, 10 cm wavelength) hence the wavelength does not influence these comparisons. Nevertheless, in one case simultaneous observations of a plume by the operational Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR, 5 cm wavelength) and a WSR-88D is used to infer backscattering characteristic and hence sizes of dominant contributors to the returns. In addition, comparisons with observations by other investigators of plumes from urban area but at a 5 cm wavelength are made. To interpret some measurements Computational Electromagnetics (CEM) tools are applied.

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Evolution of Acyl Peroxynitrates (PANs) in wildfire smoke plumes detected by the Cross‐Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) over the western U.S. during summer 2018

Geophysical Research Letters ◽

10.1029/2021gl093405 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Julieta F. Juncosa Calahorrano ◽

Vivienne H. Payne ◽

Susan Kulawik ◽

Bonne Ford ◽

Frank Flocke ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Wildfire Smoke ◽

Smoke Plumes ◽

The Cross ◽

Cross Track

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Evaluation and intercomparison of wildfire smoke forecasts from multiple modeling systems for the 2019 Williams Flats fire

10.5194/acp-2021-223 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Xinxin Ye ◽

Pargoal Arab ◽

Ravan Ahmadov ◽

Eric James ◽

Georg A. Grell ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Quality ◽

Model Performance ◽

High Spectral Resolution ◽

Lead Times ◽

Aerosol Optical Property ◽

Fire Emissions ◽

Wildfire Smoke ◽

Day Range ◽

Smoke Plumes ◽

High Resolution Models

Abstract. Wildfire smoke is one of the most significant concerns of human and environmental health, associated with its substantial impacts on air quality, weather, and climate. However, biomass burning emissions and smoke remain among the largest sources of uncertainties in air quality forecasts. In this study, we evaluate the smoke emissions and plume forecasts from twelve state-of-the-art air quality forecasting systems during the Williams Flats fire in Washington State, the U.S., August 2019, which was intensively observed during the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) field campaign. Model forecasts with lead times within one day are intercompared under the same framework based on observations from multiple platforms to reveal their performance regarding fire emissions, aerosol optical depth (AOD), surface PM2.5, plume injection, and surface PM2.5 to AOD ratio. The comparison of smoke organic carbon (OC) emissions suggests a large range of daily totals among the models with a factor of 20 to 50. Limited representations of the diurnal patterns and day-to-day variations of emissions highlight the need to incorporate new methodologies to predict the temporal evolution and reduce uncertainty of smoke emission estimates. The evaluation of smoke AOD (sAOD) forecasts suggests overall underpredictions in both the magnitude and smoke plume area for nearly all models, although the high-resolution models have a better representation of the fine-scale structures of smoke plumes. The models driven by FRP-based fire emissions or assimilating satellite AOD data generally outperform the others. Additionally, limitations of the persistence assumption used when predicting smoke emissions are revealed by substantial underpredictions of sAOD on 8 August 2019 mainly over the transported smoke plumes, owing to the underestimated emissions on the 7th. In contrast, the surface smoke PM2.5 (sPM2.5) forecasts show both positive and negative overall biases for these models, with most members presenting more considerable diurnal variations of sPM2.5. Overpredictions of sPM2.5 are found for the models driven by FRP-based emissions during nighttime, suggesting the necessity to improve vertical emission allocation within and above the planetary boundary layer (PBL). Smoke injection heights are further evaluated using the NASA Langley Research Center’s Differential Absorption High Spectral Resolution Lidar (DIAL-HSRL) data collected during the flight observations. As the fire became stronger over 3–8 August, the plume height became deeper with the day-to-day range of about 2–9 km a.g.l. However, narrower ranges are found for all models with a tendency of overpredicting the plume heights for the shallower injection transects and underpredicting for the days showing deeper injections. The misrepresented plume injection heights lead to inaccurate vertical plume allocations along the transects corresponding to transported one-day-old smoke. Discrepancies in model performance for surface PM2.5 and AOD are further suggested by the evaluation of their ratio, which cannot be compensated by solely adjusting the smoke emissions but are more attributable to model representations of plume injections, besides other possible factors including the evolution of PBL depths and aerosol optical property assumptions. By consolidating multiple forecast systems, these results provide strategic insight on pathways to improve smoke forecasts.

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Magnifying Focusing Events: Global Smoke Plumes and International Construal Connections in Newspaper Coverage of 2020 Wildfire Events

Frontiers in Communication ◽

10.3389/fcomm.2021.713591 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

Author(s):

Stephen P. Groff

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Mixed Methods ◽

Climate Policy ◽

News Coverage ◽

The United States ◽

International Travel ◽

Focusing Events ◽

Wildfire Smoke ◽

Smoke Plumes

As climate policy focusing events, wildfires are distinct from hurricanes, floods, and tornados because they also result in the release of massive smoke plumes that contribute to the concentration of atmospheric carbon. However, unlike melting glaciers, wildfires may be easier to dismiss as individual acts of human error, spontaneous acts of mother nature, and/or necessary ecological processes of agricultural renewal. This paper presents a mixed-methods analysis of 150 international and domestic English language newspaper articles related to wildfire events occurring in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the year 2020. The analysis examines how news coverage of wildfire events might focus or diffuse attention to international climate policy and anthropogenic global warming. The quantitative findings provide evidence to suggest that 30% of wildfire coverage is attributed to climate change. However, qualitative analysis suggests that climate change is acknowledged as a blame frame that is often only inferentially attributed to anthropogenic origins. The mixed-methods analysis finds that only 6% of news coverage related wildfire events to emission contributions. The analysis of these exemplar articles suggests that the international travel of wildfire smoke may serve as a focusing event from which to emphasize wildfires as both a consequence of and contributor to, global warming. Findings indicate that environmental coalitions and scientific experts’ engagement with the press are integral to creating frames that link the increasing frequency, duration, and range of wildfire events to climate policy needs.

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