Processes influencing ozone levels in Alaskan forest fire plumes during long‐range transport over the North Atlantic

Real, Elsa; Law, Kathy S.; Weinzierl, Bernadett; Fiebig, Markus; Petzold, A.; Wild, Oliver; Methven, John; Arnold, S. R.; Stohl, Andreas; Huntrieser, H.; Roiger, Anke; Schläger, Hans; Stewart, David J.; Avery, M. A.; Sachse, G. W.; Browell, Edward V.; Ferrare, R. A.; Blake, Donald R.

doi:10.1029/2006jd007576

Cited by 200 publications

(271 citation statements)

References 64 publications

(113 reference statements)

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“…Photochemical impact remains uncertain. Clearly, long-range-transported biomass burning plumes can influence Europe (Cook et al, 2007;Real et al, 2007), though the impact is variable (Hudman et al, 2004). More recently, European fires in Portugal and Russia have been shown to contribute to air pollution (Tressol et al, 2008;Martins et al, 2012), and the frequency is expected to increase with climate change (Carvalho et al, 2011).…”

Section: Biomass Burningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Ozone holds a certain fascination in atmospheric science. It is ubiquitous in the atmosphere, central to tropospheric oxidation chemistry, yet harmful to human and ecosystem health as well as being an important greenhouse gas. It is not emitted into the atmosphere but is a byproduct of the very oxidation chemistry it largely initiates. Much effort is focused on the reduction of surface levels of ozone owing to its health and vegetation impacts, but recent efforts to achieve reductions in exposure at a country scale have proved difficult to achieve owing to increases in background ozone at the zonal hemispheric scale. There is also a growing realisation that the role of ozone as a short-lived climate pollutant could be important in integrated air quality climate change mitigation. This review examines current understanding of the processes regulating tropospheric ozone at global to local scales from both measurements and models. It takes the view that knowledge across the scales is important for dealing with air quality and climate change in a synergistic manner. The review shows that there remain a number of clear challenges for ozone such as explaining surface trends, incorporating new chemical understanding, ozone-climate coupling, and a better assessment of impacts. There is a clear and present need to treat ozone across the range of scales, a transboundary issue, but with an emphasis on the hemispheric scales. New observational opportunities are offered both by satellites and small sensors that bridge the scales.

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Section: Biomass Burningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

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“…Production of O 3 within smoke plumes can continue for days and occur in distant locations relative to the fire. Real et al (2007) simulated a net production of up to 22 ppbv O 3 in smoke from Alaskan fires during its transport to Europe.…”

Section: Tropospheric Ozonementioning

confidence: 99%

The changing radiative forcing of fires: global model estimates for past, present and future

et al. 2012

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Abstract. Fires are a global phenomenon that impact climate and biogeochemical cycles, and interact with the biosphere, atmosphere and cryosphere. These impacts occur on a range of temporal and spatial scales and are difficult to quantify globally based solely on observations. Here we assess the role of fires in the climate system using model estimates of radiative forcing (RF) from global fires in preindustrial, present day, and future time periods. Fire emissions of trace gases and aerosols are derived from Community Land Model simulations and then used in a series of Community Atmosphere Model simulations with representative emissions from the years 1850, 2000, and 2100. Additional simulations are carried out with fire emissions from the Global Fire Emission Database for a present-day comparison. These results are compared against the results of simulations with no fire emissions to compute the contribution from fires. We consider the impacts of fire on greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol effects (including aerosol effects on biogeochemical cycles), and land and snow surface albedo. Overall, we estimate that pre-industrial fires were responsible for a RF of −1 W m −2 with respect to a pre-industrial climate without fires. The largest magnitude pre-industrial forcing from fires was the indirect aerosol effect on clouds (−1.6 W m −2 ). This was balanced in part by an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations due to fires (+0.83 W m −2 ). The RF of fires increases by 0.5 W m −2 from 1850 to 2000 and 0.2 W m −2 from 1850 to 2100 in the model representation from a combination of changes in fire activity and changes in the background environment in which fires occur, especially increases and decreases in the anthropogenic aerosol burden. Thus, fires play an important role in both the natural equilibrium climate and the climate perturbed by anthropogenic activity and need to be considered in future climate projections.

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“…O 3 enhancements of between 10 and 30 ppbv throughout the central and eastern US were attributed to the fires, with the model simulations being sensitive to NO x /CO and VOC/CO emission ratios. The influence of emissions from forest fires in Alaska and Canada on tropospheric O 3 production during summer 2004 was the subject of model studies by Pfister et al (2006); Real et al (2007); Cook et al (2007). Pfister et al (2006) utilised the MOZART-4 CTM to evaluate O 3 production in the outflow from fires in Alaska during summer of 2004 with measurements made from aircraft during the ICARTT campaign and at the Pico Mountain Observatory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They reported O 3 enhancements relative to CO of 0.25 ppbv ppbv −1 , contributing approximately 3 % of the Northern Hemispheric tropospheric O 3 budget. Lagrangian model studies of the outflow over the North Atlantic Ocean (Real et al, 2007) reported that although an O 3 enhancement of 17 ppbv was observed after 5 days, net O 3 loss could occur in the plumes due to biomass burning aerosols in the plume reducing the photolysis rates of O 3 and NO 2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ozone photochemistry in boreal biomass burning plumes

et al. 2013

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We present an analysis of ozone (O₃) photochemistry observed by aircraft measurements of boreal biomass burning plumes over eastern Canada in the summer of 2011. Measurements of O₃ and a number of key chemical species associated with O₃ photochemistry, including non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs), nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and total nitrogen containing species (NO_y), were made from the UK FAAM BAe-146 research aircraft as part of the "quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites" (BORTAS) experiment between 12 July and 3 August 2011. The location and timing of the aircraft measurements put BORTAS into a unique position to sample biomass burning plumes from the same source region in Northwestern Ontario with a range of ages. We found that O₃ mixing ratios measured in biomass burning plumes were indistinguishable from non-plume measurements, but evaluating them in relationship to measurements of carbon monoxide (CO), total alkyl nitrates (ΣAN) and the surrogate species NO_z (= NO_y-NO_x) revealed that the potential for O₃ production increased with plume age. We used NMHC ratios to estimate photochemical ages of the observed biomass burning plumes between 0 and 10 days. The BORTAS measurements provided a wide dynamic range of O₃ production in the sampled biomass burning plumes with ΔO₃/ΔCO enhancement ratios increasing from 0.020 ± 0.008 ppbv ppbv⁻¹ in plumes with photochemical ages less than 2 days to 0.55 ± 0.29 ppbv ppbv⁻¹ in plumes with photochemical ages greater than 5 days. We found that the main contributing factor to the variability in the ΔO₃/ΔCO enhancement ratio was ΔCO in plumes with photochemical ages less than 4 days, and that was a transition to ΔO₃ becoming the main contributing factor in plumes with ages greater than 4 days. In comparing O₃ mixing ratios with components of the NO_y budget, we observed that plumes with ages between 2 and 4 days were characterised by high aerosol loading, relative humidity greater than 40%, and low ozone production efficiency (OPE) of 7.7 ± 3.5 ppbv ppbv⁻¹ relative to ΣAN and 1.6 ± 0.9 ppbv ppbv⁻¹ relative to NO_z. In plumes with ages greater than 4 days, OPE increased to 472 ± 28 ppbv ppbv⁻¹ relative to ΣAN and 155 ± 5 ppbv ppbv⁻¹ relative to NO_z. From the BORTAS measurements we estimated that aged plumes with low aerosol loading were close to being in photostationary steady state and O₃ production in younger plumes was inhibited by high aerosol loading and greater production of ΣAN relative to O₃. The BORTAS measurements of O₃ photochemistry in boreal biomass burning plumes were found to be consistent with previous summertime aircraft measurements made over the same region during the Arctic Research of the Compos...

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Processes influencing ozone levels in Alaskan forest fire plumes during long‐range transport over the North Atlantic

Cited by 200 publications

References 64 publications

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

The changing radiative forcing of fires: global model estimates for past, present and future

Ozone photochemistry in boreal biomass burning plumes

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