Abstract. Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) released from biomass burning have multiple effects on the Earth's biogeochemical cycle, climate change, and ecosystem. These effects depend on the relative abundances of C and N species emitted, which vary with fuel type and combustion conditions. This study systematically investigates the emission characteristics of biomass burning under different fuel moisture contents, through controlled burning experiments with biomass and soil samples collected from a typical alpine forest in North America. Fuel moisture in general lowers combustion efficiency, shortens flaming phase, and introduces prolonged smoldering before ignition. It increases emission factors of incompletely oxidized C and N species, such as carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia (NH 3 ). Substantial particulate carbon and nitrogen (up to 4 times C in CO and 75% of N in NH 3 ) were also generated from high-moisture fuels, maily associated with the pre-flame smoldering. This smoldering process emits particles that are larger and contain lower elemental carbon fractions than soot agglomerates commonly observed in flaming smoke. Hydrogen (H)/C ratio and optical properties of particulate matter from the highmoisture fuels show their resemblance to plant cellulous and brown carbon, respectively. These findings have implications for modeling biomass burning emissions and impacts.

Supercooled large drops (SLD) can be a significant hazard for aviation. Past studies have shown that warm-rain processes are prevalent, or even dominant, in stratiform clouds containing SLD, but the primary factors that control SLD production are still not well understood. Giant aerosol particles have been shown to accelerate the formation of the first drizzle drops in some clouds and thus are a viable source of SLD, but observational support for testing their effectiveness in supercooled stratiform clouds has been lacking. In this study, new observations collected during six research flights from the Alliance Icing Research Study II (AIRS II) are analyzed to assess the factors that may be relevant to SLD formation, with a particular emphasis on the importance of giant aerosol particles. An initial comparison of observed giant aerosol particle number concentrations with the observed SLD suggests that they were present in sufficient numbers to be the source of the SLD. However, microphysical calculations within an adiabatic parcel model, initialized with the observed aerosol distributions and cloud properties, suggest that the giant aerosol particles were only a limited source of SLD. More SLD was produced in the modeled clouds with low droplet concentrations, simply by an efficient warm-rain process acting at temperatures below 0°C. For cases in which the warm-rain process is limited by a higher droplet concentration and small cloud depth/liquid water content, the giant aerosol particles were then the only source of SLD. The modeling results are consistent with the observed trends in SLD across the six AIRS II cases.

Abstract. Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) released from biomass burning have multiple effects on the Earth's biogeochemical cycle, climate change, and ecosystem. These effects depend on the relative abundances of C and N species emitted, which vary with fuel type and combustion conditions. This study systematically investigates the emission characteristics under different fuel moisture contents, through controlled burning experiments with biomass and soil collected from a typical alpine forest. Fuel moisture in general lowers combustion efficiency, shortens flaming phase, and introduces prolonged smoldering before ignition. It increases emission factors of incompletely oxidized C and N species, such as carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia (NH3). Substantial particulate carbon and nitrogen (up to 4 times C in CO and 75% of N in NH3) were measured mainly from the pre-flame smoldering of fuels with high moisture contents; this process emits particles larger than soot agglomerates commonly observed in flaming smoke. Hydrogen (H)/C ratio and optical properties of particulate carbon from the high-moisture fuels show their resemblance to plant cellulous and brown carbon, respectively. These findings have implications for modeling biomass burning emission and impacts.