Abstract. Wildfire smoke is one of the most significant concerns ofhuman and environmental health, associated with its substantial impacts onair quality, weather, and climate. However, biomass burning emissions andsmoke remain among the largest sources of uncertainties in air qualityforecasts. In this study, we evaluate the smoke emissions and plumeforecasts from 12 state-of-the-art air quality forecasting systemsduring the Williams Flats fire in Washington State, US, August 2019, whichwas intensively observed during the Fire Influence on Regional to GlobalEnvironments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) field campaign. Model forecasts withlead times within 1 d are intercompared under the same framework basedon observations from multiple platforms to reveal their performanceregarding fire emissions, aerosol optical depth (AOD), surface PM2.5,plume injection, and surface PM2.5 to AOD ratio. The comparison ofsmoke organic carbon (OC) emissions suggests a large range of daily totalsamong the models, with a factor of 20 to 50. Limited representations of thediurnal patterns and day-to-day variations of emissions highlight the needto incorporate new methodologies to predict the temporal evolution andreduce uncertainty of smoke emission estimates. The evaluation of smoke AOD(sAOD) forecasts suggests overall underpredictions in both the magnitude andsmoke plume area for nearly all models, although the high-resolution modelshave a better representation of the fine-scale structures of smoke plumes.The models driven by fire radiativepower (FRP)-based fire emissions or assimilating satellite AODdata generally outperform the others. Additionally, limitations of thepersistence assumption used when predicting smoke emissions are revealed bysubstantial underpredictions of sAOD on 8 August 2019, mainly over thetransported smoke plumes, owing to the underestimated emissions on7 August. In contrast, the surface smoke PM2.5 (sPM2.5) forecastsshow both positive and negative overall biases for these models, with mostmembers presenting more considerable diurnal variations of sPM2.5.Overpredictions of sPM2.5 are found for the models driven by FRP-basedemissions during nighttime, suggesting the necessity to improve verticalemission allocation within and above the planetary boundary layer (PBL).Smoke injection heights are further evaluated using the NASA LangleyResearch Center's Differential Absorption High Spectral Resolution Lidar(DIAL-HSRL) data collected during the flight observations. As the firebecame stronger over 3–8 August, the plume height became deeper, with aday-to-day range of about 2–9 km a.g.l. However, narrower ranges arefound for all models, with a tendency of overpredicting the plume heights forthe shallower injection transects and underpredicting for the days showingdeeper injections. The misrepresented plume injection heights lead toinaccurate vertical plume allocations along the transects corresponding totransported smoke that is 1 d old. Discrepancies in model performance forsurface PM2.5 and AOD are further suggested by the evaluation of theirratio, which cannot be compensated for by solely adjusting the smoke emissionsbut are more attributable to model representations of plume injections,besides other possible factors including the evolution of PBL depths andaerosol optical property assumptions. By consolidating multiple forecastsystems, these results provide strategic insight on pathways to improvesmoke forecasts.
more »
« less
Understanding the Evolution of Smoke Mass Extinction Efficiency Using Field Campaign Measurements
Aerosol mass extinction efficiency (MEE) is a key aerosol property used to connect aerosol optical properties with aerosol mass concentrations. Using measurements of smoke obtained during the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX‐AQ) campaign we find that mid‐visible smoke MEE can change by a factor of 2–3 between fresh smoke (<2 hr old) and one‐day‐old smoke. While increases in aerosol size partially explain this trend, changes in the real part of the aerosol refractive index (real(n)) are necessary to provide closure assuming Mie theory. Real(n) estimates derived from multiple days of FIREX‐AQ measurements increase with age (from 1.40 – 1.45 to 1.5–1.54 from fresh to one‐day‐old) and are found to be positively correlated with organic aerosol oxidation state and aerosol size, and negatively correlated with smoke volatility. Future laboratory, field, and modeling studies should focus on better understanding and parameterizing these relationships to fully represent smoke aging.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2013461
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10373455
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 18
- ISSN:
- 0094-8276
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
more » « less
Abstract The NOAA/NASA Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX‐AQ) experiment was a multi‐agency, inter‐disciplinary research effort to: (a) obtain detailed measurements of trace gas and aerosol emissions from wildfires and prescribed fires using aircraft, satellites and ground‐based instruments, (b) make extensive suborbital remote sensing measurements of fire dynamics, (c) assess local, regional, and global modeling of fires, and (d) strengthen connections to observables on the ground such as fuels and fuel consumption and satellite products such as burned area and fire radiative power. From Boise, ID western wildfires were studied with the NASA DC‐8 and two NOAA Twin Otter aircraft. The high‐altitude NASA ER‐2 was deployed from Palmdale, CA to observe some of these fires in conjunction with satellite overpasses and the other aircraft. Further research was conducted on three mobile laboratories and ground sites, and 17 different modeling forecast and analyses products for fire, fuels and air quality and climate implications. From Salina, KS the DC‐8 investigated 87 smaller fires in the Southeast with remote and in‐situ data collection. Sampling by all platforms was designed to measure emissions of trace gases and aerosols with multiple transects to capture the chemical transformation of these emissions and perform remote sensing observations of fire and smoke plumes under day and night conditions. The emissions were linked to fuels consumed and fire radiative power using orbital and suborbital remote sensing observations collected during overflights of the fires and smoke plumes and ground sampling of fuels.
-
more » « less
Abstract We analyze the effects of the diurnal cycle of fire emissions (DCFE) and plume rise on U.S. air quality using the MUSICAv0 (Multi‐Scale Infrastructure for Chemistry and Aerosols Version 0) model during the FIREX‐AQ (Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality) and WE‐CAN (Western wildfire Experiment for Cloud chemistry, Aerosol absorption and Nitrogen) field campaigns. To include DCFE in the model, we employ two approaches: a DCFE climatology and DCFE derived from a satellite fire radiative power product. We also implemented two sets of plume‐rise climatologies, and two plume‐rise parameterizations. We evaluate the model performance with airborne measurements, U.S. EPA Air Quality System surface measurements, and satellite products. Overall, including plume rise improves model agreement with observations such as aircraft observations of CO and NOxfor FIREX‐AQ and WE‐CAN. Applying DCFE also improves model performance, such as for surface PM2.5in fire‐impacted regions. The impact of plume rise is larger than the impact of DCFE. Plume rise can greatly enhance modeled long‐range transport of fire‐emitted pollutants. The simulations with plume‐rise parameterizations generally perform better than the simulations with plume‐rise climatologies during FIREX‐AQ, but not for WE‐CAN. The 2019 Williams Flats Fire case study demonstrates that DCFE and plume rise change fire impacts because fire emissions are subject to different meteorology and chemistry when emitted at different times of a day and altitudes. Moreover, DCFE and plume rise also impact local‐to‐regional meteorology and chemical reaction rates. DCFE and plume rise will be included in future MUSICA versions.
-
Abstract. The evolution of organic aerosol (OA) and aerosol sizedistributions within smoke plumes is uncertain due to the variability inrates of coagulation and OA condensation/evaporation between different smokeplumes and at different locations within a single plume. We use aircraftdata from the FIREX-AQ campaign to evaluate differences in evolving aerosolsize distributions, OA, and oxygen to carbon ratios (O:C) between and withinsmoke plumes during the first several hours of aging as a function of smokeconcentration. The observations show that the median particle diameterincreases faster in smoke of a higher initial OA concentration (>1000 µg m−3), with diameter growth of over 100 nm in 8 h – despite generally having a net decrease in OA enhancementratios – than smoke of a lower initial OA concentration (<100 µg m−3), which had net increases in OA. Observations of OA and O:Csuggest that evaporation and/or secondary OA formation was greater in lessconcentrated smoke prior to the first measurement (5–57 min afteremission). We simulate the size changes due to coagulation and dilution andadjust for OA condensation/evaporation based on the observed changes in OA.We found that coagulation explains the majority of the diameter growth, withOA evaporation/condensation having a relatively minor impact. We found thatmixing between the core and edges of the plume generally occurred ontimescales of hours, slow enough to maintain differences in aging betweencore and edge but too fast to ignore the role of mixing for most of our cases.more » « less
-
more » « less
Abstract As part of the WINTER (Wintertime Investigation of Transport, Emissions, and Reactivity) campaign, a Particle‐into‐Liquid Sampler with a fraction collector was flown aboard the National Center for Atmospheric Research C‐130 aircraft. Two‐minute integrated liquid samples containing dissolved fine particulate matter (PM1) species were collected and analyzed off‐line for the smoke marker levoglucosan using high‐performance anion‐exchange chromatography‐pulsed amperometric detection to compare levoglucosan with aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) biomass burning markers and investigate the contribution from residential burning during the study. Levoglucosan was correlated with AMS organic aerosol (
R 2 = 0.49) and with carbon monoxide (CO;R 2 = 0.51) for all flights. Levoglucosan was not correlated with the inorganic smoke marker water‐soluble potassium but was correlated with the AMS markers ∆C2H4O2+(high resolution,R 2 = 0.60) and ∆m /z 60 (unit mass resolution,R 2 = 0.61). However, at low levoglucosan, AMS markers deviated potentially due to interferences from other sources or differences with the species captured by the AMS markers. Analysis of levoglucosan changes relative to carbon monoxide as plumes advected from source regions showed no systematic levoglucosan loss for plumes up to 20 hr old. Based on literature residential burning source ratios and measured levoglucosan, contributions of organic carbon (OC) due to residential burning were estimated. The contribution ranged from ~30 to 100% of the OC, with significant variability depending on the source ratio used; however, the results show that biomass burning was a significant PM1OC source across the entire sampling region. A GEOS‐Chem model simulation predicted significantly less smoke contribution.
