The Impacts of Smoke Emitted from Boreal Forest Wildfires on the High Latitude Radiative Energy Budget—A Case Study of the 2002 Yakutsk Wildfires

Abstract

We examine the 2002 Yakutsk wildfire event and simulate the impacts of smoke aerosols on local radiative energy budget, using the WRF-Chem-SMOKE model. When comparing satellite retrievals (the Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) dataset) with model simulations, we found that the agreement is generally good, except for the regions where the model predicts too few clouds or SRB misclassifies strong smoke plumes as clouds. We also found that the smoke-induced changes in upward shortwave fluxes at top of atmosphere (TOA) vary under different burning and meteorological conditions. In the first period of the fire season (9–12 August), smoke particles cause a warming effect around 3 W/m2, mainly through functioning as ice nuclei, which deplete the cloud water amount in the frontal system. At the beginning of the second period of the fire season (19–20 August), large amounts of pre-existing smoke particles cause a strong cooling effect of −8 W/m2. This is offset by the warming effect caused by relatively small amounts of cloud condensation nuclei increases, which promotes the rain formation and depletes the cloud water amount. After the cloud decks are well mixed with smoke plumes (21–22 August), the first indirect and direct effects of smoke together lead to a cooling of −10 W/m2. These results highlight the importance of meso-scale modeling efforts in estimating the smoke-induced changes in the radiative energy budget over high latitudes.

The 2017 Mega-Fires in Central Chile: Impacts on Regional Atmospheric Composition and Meteorology Assessed from Satellite Data and Chemistry-Transport Modeling

“…Chemistry-transport modeling (CTM) offers a solution to cope with such limitations, hence the extensive use of CTM scenario approaches to describe and assess the transport and impact of biomass burning emissions on atmospheric composition at the global, e.g., [19][20][21] and regional scale, e.g., [22][23][24]. In particular, the CHIMERE model [25] is extensively used for the study of atmospheric impacts of large biomass burning events in several areas of the world, with examples of application in Africa [26], Russia [27][28][29], and the Mediterranean [30][31][32].…”

Introduction to the Special Issue “Radiative Transfer in the Earth Atmosphere”

“…Net radiation at the surface Affects surface processes Rahman, et al [8] Surface radiative budget Affects surface processes Lu and Sokolik [1] Radiative forcing Affects the earth energy balance Alston and Sokolik [2] Heating rates Affects the temperature profile Quijano, et al PAR (photosynthetic active radiation) Affects photosynthesis processes Xi and Sokolik [11] The main radiative quantities are summarized in Table 1, in which examples of studies are given for each quantity. The importance of each quantity is explained.…”

“…Their study combined satellite observations and a regional model WRF-Chem-DuMo. Lu and Sokolik [1] examined the radiative impact of smoke using WRF-Chem-SMOKE in conjunction with satellite observations. This study examines fires that occurred in Yakutsk, 2002.…”

“…This Special Issue presents modeling studies and results of measurements that are focused on quantifying the radiative impact, considering various aerosol and cloud types. Aerosol types considered include smoke from biomass burning Lu and Sokolik [1], Alston and Sokolik [2], mineral dust Li and Sokolik [3], urban aerosol Alston and Sokolik [2], and stratospheric aerosol Madronich et al [4]. Several types of absorbing aerosols are analyzed by Tegen and Heinold [5], using the global climate models.…”

Geothermal, Oceanic, Wildfire, Meteorological and Anthropogenic Impacts on PM<sub>2.5</sub> Concentrations in the Fairbanks Metropolitan Area

“…Wildfire smoke impacts the radiation budget [41]. Over 2/1999 to 3/2018, daily [PM 2.5 ] showed weak, negative, but significant correlation to daily total solar radiation at the surface (Table B3) (Table B3).…”