Black Carbon Emissions, Transport and Effect on Radiation Forcing Modelling during the Summer 2019–2020 Wildfires in Southeast Australia

Abstract

The emission of black carbon (BC) particles, which cause atmospheric warming by affecting radiation budget in the atmosphere, is the result of an incomplete combustion process of organic materials. The recent wildfire event during the summer 2019–2020 in south-eastern Australia was unprecedented in scale. The wildfires lasted for nearly 3 months over large areas of the two most populated states of New South Wales and Victoria. This study on the emission and dispersion of BC emitted from the biomass burnings of the wildfires using the Weather Research Forecast–Chemistry (WRF–Chem) model aims to determine the extent of BC spatial dispersion and ground concentration distribution and the effect of BC on air quality and radiative transfer at the top of the atmosphere, the atmosphere and on the ground. The predicted aerosol concentration and AOD are compared with the observed data using the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) aethalometer and air quality network and remote sensing data. The BC concentration as predicted from the WRF–Chem model, is in general, less than the observed data as measured using the aethalometer monitoring network, but the spatial pattern corresponds well, and the correlation is relatively high. The total BC emission into the atmosphere during the event and the effect on radiation budget were also estimated. This study shows that the summer 2019–2020 wildfires affect not only the air quality and health impact on the east coast of Australia but also short-term weather in the region via aerosol interactions with radiation and clouds.

Characteristics of Land-Use Carbon Emissions and Carbon Balance Zoning in the Economic Belt on the Northern Slope of Tianshan

“…The normalized statistics Z(I) of the Moran's I are generally consistent with the normal distribution [67]:…”

“…This model is extensively applied for identifying the "hot spots" or "cold spots" sin the entire area, and further classification of those spots into different spatial cluster and spatial outliners [67,68]. Local Moran's I was an indicator for spatial autocorrelation, and could be obtained by following equation:…”

Seasonal variations of metals and metalloids in atmospheric particulate matter (PM2.5) in the urban megacity Hanoi

“…Previous studies have shown that high concentrations of elemental carbon (i.e., black carbon produced by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels) reduces vertical mixing (Wilcox et al, 2016;Hu et al, 2020;Duc et al, 2023). This is because the black carbon emitted in the upper air mass absorbs the sunlight, which heats up faster than the air mass closest to the Earth's surface (Ding et al, 2016).…”