Transport of boreal forest fire emissions from Canada to Europe

Forster, C.; Wandinger, Ulla; Wotawa, Gerhard; James, P.; Mattis, Ina; Althausen, Dietrich; Simmonds, Peter; O’Doherty, Simon; Jennings, S. G.; Kleefeld, Christoph; Schneider, Johannes; Trickl, Thomas; Kreipl, S.; Jäger, H.; Stohl, Andreas

doi:10.1029/2001jd900115

Cited by 326 publications

(304 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…It was used to study the intercontinental transport of ozone [Stohl and Trickl, 1999] and the advection of Canadian forest fire emissions to Europe [Forster et al, 2001]. More details on the FLEXPART model can be found in the documentation manual, which can be obtained together with the source code via the Internet from the address http://www.forst.tu-muenchen.de/EXT/LST/ METEO/stohl/.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The residence times of aircraft emissions in the stratosphere using a mean emission inventory and emissions along actual flight tracks

Forster¹

2003

J. Geophys. Res.

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[1] Flight routes of commercial aircraft are adjusted to the actual meteorological situation in order to benefit from tail winds and avoid head winds and dangerous flight conditions. This study investigates whether these adjustments have an impact on the partitioning and the residence times of aircraft emissions in the stratosphere and troposphere. A Lagrangian dispersion model is used in combination with a mean emission inventory and emissions along actual flight tracks. Both inventories are established from Measurement of Ozone and Water Vapor by Airbus In-Service Aircraft (MOZAIC) aircraft position data in the North Atlantic Flight Corridor (NAFC) over a 1-year period. The results show that stratospheric emissions released in the NAFC are transported in a northeasterly direction towards polar regions on a timescale of a few days. The mean residence time of these emissions is about 23 days, which is shorter than documented in previous studies. The greatest fluxes from the stratosphere into the troposphere occur during the first 10 days and have their maxima over Europe and North Africa. About 62% and 67% of the emissions are directly deposited in the stratosphere in the mean emission inventory and in the inventory of the actual flight tracks, respectively. The deposition in the stratosphere was found to be sensitive to the definition of the tropopause height. However, the transport and partitioning of the emissions in the stratosphere and troposphere are only moderately affected if an inventory of the actual flight tracks is used instead of a mean emission inventory. Therefore, the systematic errors made in chemistry climate models, which use mean inventories, are small and can be tolerated for most applications. Citation: Forster, C., A. Stohl, P. James, and V. Thouret, The residence times of aircraft emissions in the stratosphere using a mean emission inventory and emissions along actual flight tracks,

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Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The residence times of aircraft emissions in the stratosphere using a mean emission inventory and emissions along actual flight tracks

Forster¹

2003

J. Geophys. Res.

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“…Subsequently, only the data relative to the four summer months from June to September were considered when calculating the long-term variations of AOD, with the background contribution hereafter referred to as BG, and enhancements attributed to extinction mainly by smoke particles from boreal forest fires (hereafter referred to as FFS) in North America and Siberia (Forster et al, 2001;Damoah et al, 2004;Stohl et al, 2006;Tunved et al, 2006). Following the same approach used by Tomasi et al (2007), this summer-time analysis ignores influences of AH and/or Asian dust (AD) that occur mainly during late winter and spring (Rahn et al, 1977;Shaw, 1982Shaw, , 1983VanCuren and Cahill, 2002;Stone et al, 2007;Quinn et al, 2007).…”

Section: Long-term Variations In Aerosol Optical Depth At Arctic Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An update on polar aerosol optical properties using POLAR-AOD and other measurements performed during the International Polar Year

Tomasi

Lupi

Mazzola

et al. 2012

Atmospheric Environment

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“…FLEXPART was validated with data from three large-scale tracer experiments in North America and Europe [Stohl et al, 1998], and it was used previously in case studies of ICT [Stohl and Trickl, 1999;Forster et al, 2001;Spichtinger et al, 2001] and to simulate intrusions of stratospheric air into the lower troposphere [Stohl et al, 2000]. It was also employed to develop a 1-year ''climatology'' of ICT [Stohl et al, 2002a].…”

Section: Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This high fire activity is unusual for the season and was caused by the prevailing extremely dry conditions. Following our previous work [Forster et al, 2001;Spichtinger et al, 2001], we used the fire reports from the National Interagency Fire Center (http://www.cidi.org/wildfire/index.html) to create a daily inventory of fire CO emissions for November 2001. Figure 9 shows the forest fire emission boxes that we used for the FLEXPART simulation.…”

Section: Flights On 19 November 2001mentioning

confidence: 99%

A backward modeling study of intercontinental pollution transport using aircraft measurements

Stohl¹,

Forster²,

Eckhardt³

et al. 2003

J. Geophys. Res.

328

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[1] In this paper we present simulations with a Lagrangian particle dispersion model to study the intercontinental transport of pollution from North America during an aircraft measurement campaign over Europe. The model was used for both the flight planning and a detailed source analysis after the campaign, which is described here with examples from two episodes. Forward calculations of emission tracers from North America, Europe, and Asia were made in order to understand the transport processes. Both episodes were preceded by stagnant conditions over North America, leading to the accumulation of pollutants in the North American boundary layer. Both anthropogenic sources and, to a lesser extent, forest fire emissions contributed to this pollution, which was then exported by warm conveyor belts to the middle and upper troposphere, where it was transported rapidly to Europe. Concentrations of many trace gases (CO, NO y , CO 2 , acetone, and several volatile organic compounds; O 3 in one case) and of ambient atmospheric ions measured aboard the research aircraft were clearly enhanced in the pollution plumes compared to the conditions outside the plumes. Backward simulations with the particle model were introduced as an indispensable tool for a more detailed analysis of the plume's source region. They make trajectory analyses (which, to date, were mainly used to interpret aircraft measurement data) obsolete. Using an emission inventory, we could decompose the tracer mixing ratios at the receptors (i.e., along the flight tracks) into contributions from every grid cell of the inventory. For both plumes we found that emission sources contributing to the tracer concentrations over Europe were distributed over large areas in North America. In one case, sources in California, Texas, and Florida contributed almost equally, and smaller contributions were also made by other sources located between the Yucatan Peninsula and Canada. In the other case, sources in eastern North America, including moderate contributions from forest fires, were most important. The plume's maximum was mainly caused by anthropogenic emissions from the New York area. To our knowledge, this is the first case reported where a pollution plume from a megacity was reliably detected over another continent.

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Transport of boreal forest fire emissions from Canada to Europe

Cited by 326 publications

References 40 publications

The residence times of aircraft emissions in the stratosphere using a mean emission inventory and emissions along actual flight tracks

The residence times of aircraft emissions in the stratosphere using a mean emission inventory and emissions along actual flight tracks

An update on polar aerosol optical properties using POLAR-AOD and other measurements performed during the International Polar Year

A backward modeling study of intercontinental pollution transport using aircraft measurements

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