Wildfire-Induced CO Plume Observations From NAST-I During the FIREX-AQ Field Campaign

Zhou, Daniel K.; Larar, Allen M.; Liu, Xu; Noe, Anna; Diskin, G. S.; Soja, A. J.; Arnold, G. Thomas; McGill, Matthew J.

doi:10.1109/jstars.2021.3059855

Cited by 4 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Smoke plumes were sampled with a comprehensive suite of instrumentation that measured both gas-and particle-phase species and optical properties. NO and NO 2 measurements were taken with a chemiluminescence instrument, and the on-board NASA Langley airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) (Zhou et al, 2021) measurements of aerosol extinction at 532 nm were used to calculate emissions for perpendicular plume transects as described below. The NO y O 3 chemiluminescence instrument uses the same detection technique as that used during WE-CAN, and NO and NO 2 associated uncertainties were ±(5 % + 6 pptv) and ±(7 % + 20 pptv), respectively (Ryerson et al, 2000;Pollack et al, 2010).…”

Section: Firex-aqmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomass burning nitrogen dioxide emissions derived from space with TROPOMI: methodology and validation

et al. 2021

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Abstract. Smoke from wildfires is a significant source of air pollution, which can adversely impact air quality and ecosystems downwind. With the recently increasing intensity and severity of wildfires, the threat to air quality is expected to increase. Satellite-derived biomass burning emissions can fill in gaps in the absence of aircraft or ground-based measurement campaigns and can help improve the online calculation of biomass burning emissions as well as the biomass burning emissions inventories that feed air quality models. This study focuses on satellite-derived NOx emissions using the high-spatial-resolution TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) NO2 dataset. Advancements and improvements to the satellite-based determination of forest fire NOx emissions are discussed, including information on plume height and effects of aerosol scattering and absorption on the satellite-retrieved vertical column densities. Two common top-down emission estimation methods, (1) an exponentially modified Gaussian (EMG) and (2) a flux method, are applied to synthetic data to determine the accuracy and the sensitivity to different parameters, including wind fields, satellite sampling, noise, lifetime, and plume spread. These tests show that emissions can be accurately estimated from single TROPOMI overpasses. The effect of smoke aerosols on TROPOMI NO2 columns (via air mass factors, AMFs) is estimated, and these satellite columns and emission estimates are compared to aircraft observations from four different aircraft campaigns measuring biomass burning plumes in 2018 and 2019 in North America. Our results indicate that applying an explicit aerosol correction to the TROPOMI NO2 columns improves the agreement with the aircraft observations (by about 10 %–25 %). The aircraft- and satellite-derived emissions are in good agreement within the uncertainties. Both top-down emissions methods work well; however, the EMG method seems to output more consistent results and has better agreement with the aircraft-derived emissions. Assuming a Gaussian plume shape for various biomass burning plumes, we estimate an average NOx e-folding time of 2 ±1 h from TROPOMI observations. Based on chemistry transport model simulations and aircraft observations, the net emissions of NOx are 1.3 to 1.5 times greater than the satellite-derived NO2 emissions. A correction factor of 1.3 to 1.5 should thus be used to infer net NOx emissions from the satellite retrievals of NO2.

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Section: Firex-aqmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomass burning nitrogen dioxide emissions derived from space with TROPOMI: methodology and validation

et al. 2021

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“…NO and NO 2 measurements were taken with a chemiluminescence instrument; and the on-board NASA Langley Airborne High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) (Zhou et al, 2021) measurements of aerosol extinction at 532 nm were used to calculate emissions for perpendicular plume transects as described below. The NOyO3 chemiluminescence instrument uses the same detection technique as that used during WE-CAN, and NO and NO 2 associated uncertainties were ±(5 % + 6 pptv) and ±(7 % + 20 pptv), respectively (Ryerson et al, 2000;Pollack et al, 2010).…”

Section: Firex-aqmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomass burning nitrogen dioxide emissions derived from space with TROPOMI: methodology and validation

Griffin

McLinden

Dammers

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. Smoke from wildfires is a significant source of air pollution, which can adversely impact air quality and ecosystems downwind. With the recently increasing intensity and severity of wildfires, the threat to air quality is expected to increase. Satellite-derived biomass burning emissions can fill in gaps in the absence of aircraft or ground-based measurement campaigns, and can help improve the on-line calculation of biomass burning emissions as well as the biomass burning emissions inventories that feed air quality models. This study focuses on satellite-derived NOx emissions using the high-spatial resolution TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) NO2 dataset. Advancements and improvements to the satellite based determination of forest fire NOx emissions are discussed, including information on plume height and effects of aerosol scattering on the satellite-retrieved vertical column densities. Two common top-down emission estimation methods, (1) an Exponentially Modified Gaussian (EMG) and (2) a flux method, are applied to synthetic data to determine the accuracy and the sensitivity to different parameters, including wind fields, satellite sampling, noise, lifetime and plume spread. These tests show that emissions can be accurately estimated from single TROPOMI overpasses. The effect of smoke aerosols on TROPOMI NO2 columns (via AMFs) is estimated and these satellite columns and emission estimates are compared to aircraft observations from four different aircraft campaigns measuring biomass burning plumes in 2018 and 2019 in North America. Our results indicate that applying an explicit aerosol correction to the TROPOMI NO2 columns improve the agreement with the aircraft observations (by about 10–25 %). The aircraft- and satellite-derived emissions are in good agreement within the uncertainties. Both top-down emissions methods work well, however, the EMG method seems to output more consistent results and has better agreement with the aircraft-derived emissions. Assuming a Gaussian plume shape for various biomass burning plumes, we estimate an average NOx e-folding time of 2 ± 1 h from TROPOMI observations. Based on chemistry transport model simulations and aircraft observations, the net emissions of NOx are 1.3 to 1.5 times greater than the satellite-derived NO2 emissions. A correction factor of 1.3 to 1.5 should thus be used to infer net NOx emissions from the satellite retrievals of NO2.

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“…The NAST-I instrument and its retrieval algorithms are described elsewhere. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] The western portion of the FIREX-AQ campaign domain (August 5, 2019, to August 21, 2019) covers 14 large wildfires fueled by grass, woodland, and scrub. 20 Fire-induced CO plumes observed by NAST-I during the FIREX-AQ have been analyzed and reported.…”

Section: Experiment Observation and Plume Age Estimation Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…NAST-I continuously covers a space large enough to monitor the wildfire plume from its origination, evolution and transport, providing three-dimensional (3D) distributions of geophysical parameters including O 3 and CO with a higher spatial resolution compared with satellite IR-ultraspectral sensors, and thus, it benefits our study of wildfire plumes. 16 NAST-I data used in this study were collected under clear-sky conditions. Geophysical parameters cannot be retrieved with NAST-I under opaque clouds as infrared measurements are not able to penetrate opaque clouds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Geophysical parameters cannot be retrieved with NAST-I under opaque clouds as infrared measurements are not able to penetrate opaque clouds. 14 Materials presented in this study are a follow-up to the work of Zhou et al 16 A brief description of the FIREX-AQ experiment, observations, and wildfire plume age estimation methodology is given in Sec. 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Estimation of fire-induced CO plume age from NAST–I during the FIREX-AQ field campaign

Zhou

Larar

Liu

et al. 2022

J. Appl. Rem. Sens.

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Ultra-spectrally resolved infrared measurements from aircraft and space-based observations contain information about tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone (O 3 ), as well as other trace species. A methodology for retrieving these tropospheric trace species from such remotely sensed spectral data has been developed and validated for the National Airborne Sounder Testbed-Interferometer (NAST-I). The Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) field campaign was conducted during August 2019 to investigate the impact of wildfire and biomass smoke on air quality and weather in the continental United States. NAST-I CO and O 3 measurements from the recent FIREX-AQ field campaign are presented and used to estimate wildfire plume age. Results show enhanced levels of CO in the evolving plume as it is transported away from the fire ground site, and its plume age is associated with the plume distance in both the vertical and horizontal directions from the wildfire location. These results are enabled by the moderate-vertical and high-horizontal resolution obtained from the NAST-I IR spectrometer onboard the NASA ER-2 aircraft. This study advances our knowledge of fire-induced plumes with their evolution and age characterized in three-dimensional space using information from NAST-I retrieved CO and O 3 and relative changes in their concentrations. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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Wildfire-Induced CO Plume Observations From NAST-I During the FIREX-AQ Field Campaign

Cited by 4 publications

References 33 publications

Biomass burning nitrogen dioxide emissions derived from space with TROPOMI: methodology and validation

Biomass burning nitrogen dioxide emissions derived from space with TROPOMI: methodology and validation

Biomass burning nitrogen dioxide emissions derived from space with TROPOMI: methodology and validation

Estimation of fire-induced CO plume age from NAST–I during the FIREX-AQ field campaign

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