Satellite-Based Analysis of Fire Events and Transport of Emissions in the Arctic

Author(s):  
Anu-Maija Sundström ◽  
Tomi Karppinen ◽  
Antti Arola ◽  
Larisa Sogacheva ◽  
Hannakaisa Lindqvist ◽  
...  

<p>Climate change is proceeding fastest in the Arctic region. During past years Arctic summers have been warmer and drier elevating the risk for extensive forest fire episodes. In fact, satellite observations show, that during past two summers (2018, 2019) an increase is seen in the number of fires occurring above the Arctic Circle, especially in Siberia. While human-induced emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases are the main driving factor of global warming, short-lived climate forcers or pollutants emitted from the forest fires are also playing an important role especially in the Arctic. Absorbing aerosols can cause direct arctic warming locally. They can also alter radiative balance when depositing onto snow/ice and decreasing the surface albedo, resulting in subsequent warming. Aerosol-cloud interaction feedbacks can also enhance warming. Forest fire emissions also affect local air quality and photochemical processes in the atmosphere. For example, CO contributes to the formation of tropospheric ozone and affects the abundance of greenhouse gases such as methane and CO<sub>2</sub>.</p><p>This study focuses on analyzing fire episodes in the Arctic for the past 10 years, as well as investigating the transport of forest fire CO and smoke aerosols to the Arctic. Smoke plumes and their transport are analyzed using Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI) from several satellite instruments: GOME-2 onboard Metop A and B, OMI onboard Aura, and TROPOMI onboard Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite. Observations of CO are obtained from IASI (Metop A and B) as well as from TROPOMI, while the fire observations are obtained from MODIS instruments onboard Aqua and Terra, as well as from VIIRS onboard Suomi NPP.  In addition, observations e.g. from a space-borne lidar, CALIPSO, is used to obtain vertical distribution of smoke and to estimate plume heights.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomi Karppinen ◽  
Anu-Maija Sundström ◽  
Hannakaisa Lindqvist ◽  
Johanna Tamminen

<p><span>Climate change is proceeding fastest in the Arctic region. While human-induced emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases are the main driving factor of global warming, short-lived climate forcers or pollutants emitted from the forest fires are also playing an important role, especially in the Arctic. Forest fire emissions also affect local air quality and photochemical processes in the atmosphere. For example, CO contributes to the formation of tropospheric ozone and affects the abundance of greenhouse gases such as methane and CO2.</span></p><p><span>During past years Arctic summers have been warmer and drier elevating the risk for extensive forest fire episodes. Satellite observations show, that during the past three summers (2018-2020) fire detections in Arctic, especially in Arctic Siberia have increased considerably, affecting also local emissions of CO. This work focuses on studying CO concentration and its variation at high latitudes and in the Arctic using satellite and ground-based observations. Satellite observations of CO from TROPOMI are analyzed for the 2018-2020 (NH) summer months. To assess the satellite retrieved columns the satellite measurements are compared to ground-based remote sensing measurements at Sodankylä. Also, ground-based in-situ measurements are used to see how the total column changes mirror the ground level concentrations. The fire characteristics are analyzed using observations from MODIS instruments onboard Aqua and Terra. Fire effects on seasonal cycle and interannual variability of CO concentrations at Arctic high latitudes are analyzed.</span></p>


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (20) ◽  
pp. 9739-9760 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Alvarado ◽  
J. A. Logan ◽  
J. Mao ◽  
E. Apel ◽  
D. Riemer ◽  
...  

Abstract. We determine enhancement ratios for NOx, PAN, and other NOy species from boreal biomass burning using aircraft data obtained during the ARCTAS-B campaign and examine the impact of these emissions on tropospheric ozone in the Arctic. We find an initial emission factor for NOx of 1.06 g NO per kg dry matter (DM) burned, much lower than previous observations of boreal plumes, and also one third the value recommended for extratropical fires. Our analysis provides the first observational confirmation of rapid PAN formation in a boreal smoke plume, with 40% of the initial NOx emissions being converted to PAN in the first few hours after emission. We find little clear evidence for ozone formation in the boreal smoke plumes during ARCTAS-B in either aircraft or satellite observations, or in model simulations. Only a third of the smoke plumes observed by the NASA DC8 showed a correlation between ozone and CO, and ozone was depleted in the plumes as often as it was enhanced. Special observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) also show little evidence for enhanced ozone in boreal smoke plumes between 15 June and 15 July 2008. Of the 22 plumes observed by TES, only 4 showed ozone increasing within the smoke plumes, and even in those cases it was unclear that the increase was caused by fire emissions. Using the GEOS-Chem atmospheric chemistry model, we show that boreal fires during ARCTAS-B had little impact on the median ozone profile measured over Canada, and had little impact on ozone within the smoke plumes observed by TES.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 814
Author(s):  
Sergey Kostrykin ◽  
Anastasia Revokatova ◽  
Alexey Chernenkov ◽  
Veronika Ginzburg ◽  
Polina Polumieva ◽  
...  

The work is devoted to the study of the climatic effects of black carbon (BC) transferred from forest fires to the Arctic zone. The HYSPLIT (The Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model) trajectory model was used to initially assess the potential for particle transport from fires. The results of the trajectory analysis of the 2019 fires showed that the probability of the transfer of particles to the Arctic ranges from 1% to 10%, and in some cases increases to 20%. Detailed studies of the possible influence of BC ejected as a result of fires became possible by using the climate model of the INMCM5 (Institute of Numerical Mathematics Climate Model). The results of the numerical experiments have shown that the maximum concentration of BC in the Arctic atmosphere is observed in July and August and is associated with emissions from fires. The deposition of BC in the Arctic increases by about 1.5–2 times in the same months, in comparison with simulation without forest fire emissions. This caused an average decrease in solar radiation forcing of 0.3–0.4 Wt/m2 and an increase in atmospheric radiation heating of up to 5–6 Wt/m2. To assess the radiation forcing from BC contaminated snow, we used the dependences of the change in the snow albedo on the snow depth, and the albedo of the underlying surface for a given amount of BC fallen on the snow. These dependences were constructed on the basis of the SNICAR (Snow, Ice, and Aerosol Radiative) model. According to our calculations, the direct radiative forcing from BC in the atmosphere with a clear sky is a maximum of 4–5 W/m2 in July and August.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 15325-15377 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Alvarado ◽  
J. A. Logan ◽  
J. Mao ◽  
E. Apel ◽  
D. Riemer ◽  
...  

Abstract. We determine enhancement ratios for NOx, PAN, and other NOy species from boreal biomass burning using aircraft data obtained during the ARCTAS-B campaign and examine the impact of these emissions on tropospheric ozone in the Arctic. We find an initial emission factor for NOx of 1.06 g NO per kg dry matter (DM) burned, much lower than previous observations of boreal plumes, and also one third the value recommended for extratropical fires. Our analysis provides the first observational confirmation of rapid PAN formation in a boreal smoke plume, with 40% of the initial NOx emissions being converted to PAN in the first few hours after emission. We find little clear evidence for ozone formation in the boreal smoke plumes during ARCTAS-B in either aircraft or satellite observations, or in model simulations. Only a third of the smoke plumes observed by the NASA DC8 showed a correlation between ozone and CO, and ozone was depleted in the plumes as often as it was enhanced. Special observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) also show little evidence for enhanced ozone in boreal smoke plumes between 15 June and 15 July 2008. Of the 22 plumes observed by TES, only 4 showed ozone increasing within the smoke plumes, and even in those cases it was unclear that the increase was caused by fire emissions. Using the GEOS-Chem atmospheric chemistry model, we show that boreal fires during ARCTAS-B had little impact on the median ozone profile measured over Canada, and had little impact on ozone within the smoke plumes observed by TES.


1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 700-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Dixon ◽  
Olga N. Krankina

Boreal forests of Russia play a prominent role in the global carbon cycle and the flux of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Large areas of Russian forest burn annually, and contributions to the net flux of carbon to the atmosphere may be significant. Forest fire emissions were calculated for the years 1971–1991 using fire frequency and distribution data and fuel and carbon density for different forest ecoregions of Russia. Both direct carbon release and indirect post-fire biogenic carbon flux were estimated. From 1971 to 1991 the annual total forest area burned by wildfire ranged from 1.41 × 106 to 10.0 × 106 ha. Approximately 15 000–25 000 forest fires occurred annually during this period. Mean annual direct CO2-C emissions from wildfire was approximately 0.05 Pg over this 21-year period. Total post-fire biogenic CO2-C emissions for 1971–1991 ranged from 2.5 to 5.9 Pg (0.12–0.28 Pg annually). Forest fires and other disturbances are expected to be a primary mechanism driving vegetation change associated with projected global climate change. Future forest fire scenarios in Russia based on general circulation model projections suggest that up to 30–50% of the land surface area, or 334 × 106 to 631 × 106 ha of forest, will be affected. An additional 6.7 × 106 to 12.6 × 106 ha of Russian boreal forest are projected to burn annually if general circulation model based vegetation-change scenarios are achieved within the next 50 years. The direct flux of CO2-C from future forest fires is estimated to total 6.1–10.7 Pg over a 50-year period. Indirect post-fire biogenic release of greenhouse gases in the future is expected to be two to six times greater than direct emissions. Forest management and fire-control activities may help reduce wildfire severity and mitigate the associated pulse of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 9747-9761
Author(s):  
J.-P. Muller ◽  
V. Yershov ◽  
D. Fisher ◽  
M. Krol ◽  
W. Peters ◽  
...  

Abstract. The ALANIS (Atmosphere-LANd Integrated Study) Smoke Plume project is an on-going study funded by the ESA's Support to Science Element (STSE) dedicated to the monitoring of the fire aerosol and trace gases dispersion over Eurasia from multi-mission EO-based data, in link with the scientific issues of land-atmosphere processes in the iLEAPS community. The injection and dispersion of the smoke plumes are performed with the TM5 model from several new products (burnt areas and forest fire emissions amounts, smoke plumes injection heights) derived from the MERIS and AATSR products and from the validated IASI CO products. A first study focused on the Russian wildfire events of the summer of 2010 has shown the potential of the European missions to assess the forest fire emissions and the aerosols/gases injection and transport over Eurasia. The release of the integrated model, including the new products still under development, is planned for the summer of 2011.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  

Forest and wildland fires are a natural part of ecosystems worldwide, but large fires in particular can cause societal, economic and ecological disruption. Fires are an important source of greenhouse gases and black carbon that can further amplify and accelerate climate change. In recent years, large forest fires in Sweden demonstrate that the issue should also be considered in other parts of Fennoscandia. This final report of the project “Forest fires in Fennoscandia under changing climate and forest cover (IBA ForestFires)” funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, synthesises current knowledge of the occurrence, monitoring, modelling and suppression of forest fires in Fennoscandia. The report also focuses on elaborating the role of forest fires as a source of black carbon (BC) emissions over the Arctic and discussing the importance of international collaboration in tackling forest fires. The report explains the factors regulating fire ignition, spread and intensity in Fennoscandian conditions. It highlights that the climate in Fennoscandia is characterised by large inter-annual variability, which is reflected in forest fire risk. Here, the majority of forest fires are caused by human activities such as careless handling of fire and ignitions related to forest harvesting. In addition to weather and climate, fuel characteristics in forests influence fire ignition, intensity and spread. In the report, long-term fire statistics are presented for Finland, Sweden and the Republic of Karelia. The statistics indicate that the amount of annually burnt forest has decreased in Fennoscandia. However, with the exception of recent large fires in Sweden, during the past 25 years the annually burnt area and number of fires have been fairly stable, which is mainly due to effective fire mitigation. Land surface models were used to investigate how climate change and forest management can influence forest fires in the future. The simulations were conducted using different regional climate models and greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Simulations, extending to 2100, indicate that forest fire risk is likely to increase over the coming decades. The report also highlights that globally, forest fires are a significant source of BC in the Arctic, having adverse health effects and further amplifying climate warming. However, simulations made using an atmospheric dispersion model indicate that the impact of forest fires in Fennoscandia on the environment and air quality is relatively minor and highly seasonal. Efficient forest fire mitigation requires the development of forest fire detection tools including satellites and drones, high spatial resolution modelling of fire risk and fire spreading that account for detailed terrain and weather information. Moreover, increasing the general preparedness and operational efficiency of firefighting is highly important. Forest fires are a large challenge requiring multidisciplinary research and close cooperation between the various administrative operators, e.g. rescue services, weather services, forest organisations and forest owners is required at both the national and international level.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 3485-3497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcella Busilacchio ◽  
Piero Di Carlo ◽  
Eleonora Aruffo ◽  
Fabio Biancofiore ◽  
Cesare Dari Salisburgo ◽  
...  

Abstract. The observations collected during the BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites (BORTAS) campaign in summer 2011 over Canada are analysed to study the impact of forest fire emissions on the formation of ozone (O3) and total peroxy nitrates ∑PNs, ∑ROONO2). The suite of measurements on board the BAe-146 aircraft, deployed in this campaign, allows us to calculate the production of O3 and of  ∑PNs, a long-lived NOx reservoir whose concentration is supposed to be impacted by biomass burning emissions. In fire plumes, profiles of carbon monoxide (CO), which is a well-established tracer of pyrogenic emission, show concentration enhancements that are in strong correspondence with a significant increase of concentrations of ∑PNs, whereas minimal increase of the concentrations of O3 and NO2 is observed. The ∑PN and O3 productions have been calculated using the rate constants of the first- and second-order reactions of volatile organic compound (VOC) oxidation. The ∑PN and O3 productions have also been quantified by 0-D model simulation based on the Master Chemical Mechanism. Both methods show that in fire plumes the average production of ∑PNs and O3 are greater than in the background plumes, but the increase of ∑PN production is more pronounced than the O3 production. The average ∑PN production in fire plumes is from 7 to 12 times greater than in the background, whereas the average O3 production in fire plumes is from 2 to 5 times greater than in the background. These results suggest that, at least for boreal forest fires and for the measurements recorded during the BORTAS campaign, fire emissions impact both the oxidized NOy and O3,  but (1 ∑PN production is amplified significantly more than O3 production and (2) in the forest fire plumes the ratio between the O3 production and the ∑PN production is lower than the ratio evaluated in the background air masses, thus confirming that the role played by the ∑PNs produced during biomass burning is significant in the O3 budget. The implication of these observations is that fire emissions in some cases, for example boreal forest fires and in the conditions reported here, may influence more long-lived precursors of O3 than short-lived pollutants, which in turn can be transported and eventually diluted in a wide area.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Cherepanova ◽  
Valery Bondur ◽  
Viktor Zamshin ◽  
Natalia Feoktistova

<p>Forest fires affect environmental changes both directly, changing the type of land cover, causing local and regional air pollution through emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and indirectly through a secondary effect on atmospheric, soil and hydrological processes. The increase in the number and area of uncontrolled wildfires, the degradation of permafrost in high latitude areas leads to a change in the balance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and it results in the negative impact on the Earth’s climatic system.</p><p>This study examined the Arctic-Boreal territories of the Russian Federation, where huge forest fires were observed in 2018-2019. In most of these areas, forest fire detection is carried out only by means of the satellite monitoring without aviation support. The sparsely populated and inaccessible territories are a major factor of the rapid spread of fires over large areas. Most of the forest areas in the region are so-called control zones, where the authorities may decide not to extinguish the fires if they do not threaten settlements and economic facilities, and consider the salvation of forests economically unprofitable. However, there is no reliable data on the environmental consequences of large forest fires in the Arctic-Boreal territories.</p><p>Satellite monitoring of wildfires provides the detection of fire locations, an assessment of their area and burning time. In our study, we used various indices calculated from remote sensing data for the pre-fire and post-fire periods to identify the spatiotemporal patterns of environmental change caused by large wildfires. The Sentinel 5 TROPOMI time series have been analyzed for the short-term and long-term atmospheric composition anomalies detection caused by forest fires in the region. In the process of comparing the methane concentrations time series for the 2018- 2019 fire seasons the constantly high values anomaly zones were found. We believe that these anomalies are resulting from Sentinel-5 CH4 algorithm constrains, which requires additional work on data validation with relation to the local conditions.</p><p>The reported study was funded by RFBR, MOST (China) and DST (India) according to the research project № 19-55-80021</p>


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor B. Konovalov ◽  
Daria A. Lvova ◽  
Matthias Beekmann ◽  
Hiren Jethva ◽  
Eugene F. Mikhailov ◽  
...  

Abstract. Black carbon (BC) emissions from open biomass burning (BB) are known to have a considerable impact on the radiative budget of the atmosphere on global and regional scales but are poorly constrained in models by atmospheric observations, especially in remote regions. Here, we investigate the feasibility of constraining BC emissions from BB with satellite observations of the aerosol absorption optical depth (AAOD) and the aerosol extinction optical depth (AOD) retrieved from OMI (Ozone monitoring instrument) and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) measurements, respectively. We consider the case of Siberian BB BC emissions, which have a strong potential to impact the Arctic climate system. Using aerosol remote sensing data collected at Siberian sites of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) along with the results of the Fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4), we establish an empirical parameterization relating the ratio of the elemental carbon (EC) and organic carbon (OC) contents in BB aerosol to the ratio of AAOD and AOD at the wavelengths of the satellite observations. Applying this parameterization to the BC and OC column amounts simulated with the CHIMERE chemistry transport model, we optimize the parameters of the BB emission model based on MODIS measurements of the fire radiative power (FRP) and obtain top-down optimized estimates of the total monthly BB BC amounts emitted from intense Siberian fires that occurred in May–September 2012. The top-down estimates are compared to the corresponding values obtained using the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4) and the Fire Emission Inventory–northern Eurasia (FEI-NE). Our simulations using the optimized BB aerosol emissions are verified against AAOD and AOD data that were withheld from the estimation procedure. The simulations are further evaluated against in situ EC and OC measurements at the Zotino Tall Tower Observatory (ZOTTO) and also against aerosol measurement data collected on board of an aircraft in the framework of the Airborne Extensive Regional Observations (YAK-AEROSIB) experiments. We conclude that our BC and OC emission estimates, considered with their confidence intervals, are consistent with the ensemble of the measurement data analyzed in this study. Siberian fires are found to emit 0.41 ± 0.14 Tg of BC over the whole period of the five months considered; this estimate is a factor of 2 larger and a factor of 1.5 smaller compared to that the corresponding estimates based on the GFED4 (0.20 Tg) and FEI-NE (0.61 Tg) data, respectively. Our estimates of monthly BC emissions are also found to be larger than the BC amounts calculated with the GFED4 data and smaller than those calculated with the FEI-NE data for any of the five months. Especially large positive differences of our estimates of monthly BC emissions with respect to the GFED4 data are found in May and September. This finding indicates that the GFED4 database is likely to strongly underestimate BC emissions from agricultural burns and grass fires in Siberia. All these differences have important implications for climate change in the Arctic, as it is found that about a quarter of the huge BB BC mass emitted in Siberia during the fire season of 2012 was transported across the polar circle into the Arctic. Overall, the results of our analysis indicate that a combination of the available satellite observations of AAOD and AOD can provide the necessary constraints on BB BC emissions.


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