An operational system for the assimilation of the satellite information on wild-land fires for the needs of air quality modelling and forecasting

Sofiev, Mikhail; Vankevich, Roman; Lötjönen, Milla; Prank, Marje; Petukhov, V.; Ermakova, Tatiana S.; Koskinen, J.; Kukkonen, Jaakko

doi:10.5194/acp-9-6833-2009

Cited by 199 publications

(200 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Unlike biomass burning emission inventories based on burned area, inventories using active fire observations from Earth observation satellites can be produced in near real time (Freitas et al, 2005;Reid et al, 2009;Sofiev et al, 2009;Wiedinmyer et al, 2011;Kaiser et al, 2012;Darmenov and da Silva, 2013). The near real time emissions inventories are, at present, generally based on active fire data from the MODIS instruments operating onboard the Terra and Aqua polar orbiting satellites.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New fire diurnal cycle characterizations to improve fire radiative energy assessments made from MODIS observations

Andela¹,

Kaiser

Werf³

et al. 2015

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. Accurate near real time fire emissions estimates are required for air quality forecasts. To date, most approaches are based on satellite-derived estimates of fire radiative power (FRP), which can be converted to fire radiative energy (FRE) which is directly related to fire emissions. Uncertainties in these FRE estimates are often substantial. This is for a large part because the most often used low-Earth orbit satellite-based instruments such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) have a relatively poor sampling of the usually pronounced fire diurnal cycle. In this paper we explore the spatial variation of this fire diurnal cycle and its drivers using data from the geostationary Meteosat Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI). In addition, we sampled data from the SEVIRI instrument at MODIS detection opportunities to develop two approaches to estimate hourly FRE based on MODIS active fire detections. The first approach ignored the fire diurnal cycle, assuming persistent fire activity between two MODIS observations, while the second approach combined knowledge on the climatology of the fire diurnal cycle with active fire detections to estimate hourly FRE. The full SEVIRI time series, providing full coverage of the fire diurnal cycle, were used to evaluate the results. Our study period comprised of 3 years (2010-2012), and we focused on Africa and the Mediterranean basin to avoid the use of potentially lower quality SEVIRI data obtained at very far off-nadir view angles. We found that the fire diurnal cycle varies substantially over the study region, and depends on both fuel and weather conditions. For example, more "intense" fires characterized by a fire diurnal cycle with high peak fire activity, long duration over the day, and with nighttime fire activity are most common in areas of large fire size (i.e., large burned area per fire event). These areas are most prevalent in relatively arid regions. Ignoring the fire diurnal cycle generally resulted in an overestimation of FRE, while including information on the climatology of the fire diurnal cycle improved FRE estimates. The approach based on knowledge of the climatology of the fire diurnal cycle also improved distribution of FRE over the day, although only when aggregating model results to coarser spatial and/or temporal scale good correlation was found with the full SEVIRI hourly reference data set. We recommend the use of regionally varying fire diurnal cycle information within the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) used in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Services, which will improve FRE estimates and may allow for further reconciliation of biomass burning emission estimates from different inventories.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New fire diurnal cycle characterizations to improve fire radiative energy assessments made from MODIS observations

Andela¹,

Kaiser

Werf³

et al. 2015

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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“…Biomass burning emission data have been calculated from global fire emission data that have been obtained by re-analysis of fire radiative power data obtained by MODIS instrument onboard of Aqua and Terra satellites during an integrated monitoring and modeling system for wildland fires (IS4FIRES) project (Sofiev et al, 2009). The emission data are available for Europe (daily, 0.1 x 0.1° spatial resolution) in Netcdf format.…”

Section: Experiments Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity of feedback effects in CBMZ/MOSAIC chemical mechanism

José

Pérez

Balzarini

et al. 2015

Atmospheric Environment

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a bstr a ctTo investigate the impact of the aerosol effects on meteorological variables and pollutant concentrations two simulations with the WRF-Chem model have been performed over Europe for year 2010. We have performed a baseline simulation without any feedback effects and a second simulation including the direct as well as the indirect aerosol effect. The paper describes the full configuration of the model, the simulation design, special impacts and evaluation. Although low aerosol particle concentrations are detected, the inclusion of the feedback effects results in an increase of solar radiation at the surface over cloudy areas (North-West, including the Atlantic) and decrease over more sunny locations (SouthEast). Aerosol effects produce an increase of the water vapor and decrease the planet boundary layer height over the whole domain except in the Sahara area, where the maximum particle concentrations are detected. Significant ozone concentrations are found over the Mediterranean area. Simulated feedback effects between aerosol concentrations and meteorological variables and on pollutant distributions strongly depend on the aerosol concentrations and the clouds. Further investigations are necessary with higher aerosol particle concentrations. WRF-Chem variables are evaluated using available hourly ob-servations in terms of performance statistics. Standardized observations from the ENSEMBLE system webinterface were used. The research was developed under the second phase of Air Quality Model Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII). WRF-Chem demonstrates its capability in capturing tem-poral and spatial variations of the major meteorological variables and pollutants, except the wind speed over complex terrain. The wind speed bias may affect the accuracy in the chemical predictions (NO2, SO2). The analysis of the correlations between simulated data sets and observational data sets indicates that the simulation with aerosol effects performs slightly better. These results indicate potential importance of the aerosol feedback effects and an urgent need to further improve the representations in current atmospheric models to reduce uncertainties at all scales.

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“…Following a number of previous studies (e.g., Sofiev et al, 2009;Konovalov et al, 2011;Kaiser et al, 2012;Huijnen et al, 2016), we calculated BB emissions by assuming a direct instantaneous relationship between the FRP and the emission rate at a time t: 30 Taking into account the experimental analysis by Wooster et al (2005), we assumed α to be of 3.68×10 -4 g s -1 W -1 . The vegetation land cover fractions, ρ l , were evaluated with the initial resolution of 0.2°×0.1° using the NCAR USGS land-use dataset (Homer et al, 2004), which was also used to specify the land use data in the CHIMERE model.…”

Section: Calculations Of Bb Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimation of black carbon emissions from Siberian fires using satellite observations of absorption and extinction optical depths

Konovalov¹,

Lvova²,

Beekmann³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. Black carbon (BC) emissions from open biomass burning (BB) are known to have a considerable impact on the radiative budget of the atmosphere on global and regional scales but are poorly constrained in models by atmospheric 20 observations, especially in remote regions. Here, we investigate the feasibility of constraining BC emissions from BB with satellite observations of the aerosol absorption optical depth (AAOD) and the aerosol extinction optical depth (AOD) retrieved from OMI (Ozone monitoring instrument) and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) measurements, respectively. We consider the case of Siberian BB BC emissions, which have a strong potential to impact the Arctic climate system. Using aerosol remote sensing data collected at Siberian sites of the Aerosol Robotic Network 25 (AERONET) along with the results of the Fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4), we establish an empirical parameterization relating the ratio of the elemental carbon (EC) and organic carbon (OC) contents in BB aerosol to the ratio of AAOD and AOD at the wavelengths of the satellite observations. Applying this parameterization to the BC and OC column amounts simulated with the CHIMERE chemistry transport model, we optimize the parameters of the BB emission model based on MODIS measurements of the fire radiative power (FRP) and obtain top-down optimized estimates of the 30 total monthly BB BC amounts emitted from intense Siberian fires that occurred in May-September 2012. The top-down estimates are compared to the corresponding values obtained using the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4) and the Fire Emission Inventory-northern Eurasia (FEI-NE). Our simulations using the optimized BB aerosol emissions are verified against AAOD and AOD data that were withheld from the estimation procedure. The simulations are further evaluated against in situ EC and OC measurements at the Zotino Tall Tower Observatory (ZOTTO) and also against aerosol 35 2 measurement data collected on board of an aircraft in the framework of the Airborne Extensive Regional Observations (YAK-AEROSIB) experiments. We conclude that our BC and OC emission estimates, considered with their confidence intervals, are consistent with the ensemble of the measurement data analyzed in this study. Siberian fires are found to emit 0.41 ± 0.14 Tg of BC over the whole period of the five months considered; this estimate is a factor of 2 larger and a factor of 1.5 smaller compared to that the corresponding estimates based on the GFED4 (0.20 Tg) and FEI-NE (0.61 Tg) data, 5 respectively. Our estimates of monthly BC emissions are also found to be larger than the BC amounts calculated with the GFED4 data and smaller than those calculated with the FEI-NE data for any of the five months. Especially large positive differences of our estimates of monthly BC emissions with respect to the GFED4 data are found in May and September. This finding indicates that the GFED4 database is likely to strongly underestimate BC emissions from agricultural burns and ...

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An operational system for the assimilation of the satellite information on wild-land fires for the needs of air quality modelling and forecasting

Cited by 199 publications

References 41 publications

New fire diurnal cycle characterizations to improve fire radiative energy assessments made from MODIS observations

New fire diurnal cycle characterizations to improve fire radiative energy assessments made from MODIS observations

Sensitivity of feedback effects in CBMZ/MOSAIC chemical mechanism

Estimation of black carbon emissions from Siberian fires using satellite observations of absorption and extinction optical depths

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