Modelling the radiative effects of smoke aerosols on carbon fluxes in Amazon

Abstract

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Every year, a dense smoke haze of regional dimensions covers a large portion of South America originated from fire activities in the Amazon Basin and Central parts of Brazil during the dry/biomass-burning season between August and October. Over a large portion of South America, the average aerosol optical depth at 550 nm exceeds 1.0 during the fire season while the background value during the rainy season is below 0.2. Smoke aerosol particles increase scattering and absorption of the incident solar radiation. The regional-scale aerosol layer reduces the amount of solar energy reaching the surface, cools the near surface air, and increases the diffuse radiation fraction over a large disturbed area of the Amazon rainforest. These factors affect the energy and CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes at the surface. In this work, we applied a fully integrated atmospheric model to assess the impact of smoke aerosols in CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes in the Amazon region during 2010. We address the effects of the attenuation of the solar global radiation and the enhancement of the diffuse solar radiation flux inside the canopy. Our results indicated that the smoke aerosols led to an increase of about 22 % of the gross primary productivity of Amazonia, 9 % of plant respiration and a decline in soil respiration from of 3 %. Consequently, Amazonia net ecosystem exchange during September 2010 dropped from +101 to −104 TgC when the aerosol effects were considered, mainly due to the aerosol diffuse radiation effect. For the forest biome, our results pointed to a dominance of the diffuse radiation effect on CO<sub>2</sub> fluxes, reaching a balance of 50 % – 50 % between the diffuse and direct aerosol effects for high aerosol loads. For C3 grass type and <i>cerrado</i>, as expected, the contribution of the diffuse radiation effect is much lower, tending to zero with the increase of aerosol load. That is, the Amazon during the dry season, in the presence of high smoke aerosol loads, change from being a source to be a sink of CO<sub>2</sub> to the atmosphere.</p>