Abstract. Inverse analysis was used to estimate fire carbon
emissions in Equatorial Asia induced by the big El Niño event in 2015.
This inverse analysis is unique because it extensively used high-precision
atmospheric mole fraction data of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the
commercial aircraft observation project CONTRAIL. Through comparisons with
independent shipboard observations, especially carbon monoxide (CO) data,
the validity of the estimated fire-induced carbon emissions was demonstrated.
The best estimate, which used both aircraft and shipboard CO2
observations, indicated 273 Tg C for fire emissions from
September–October 2015. This 2-month period accounts for 75 % of the annual total fire emissions and 45 % of the annual total net carbon flux within the region, indicating that fire emissions are a dominant driving force of interannual variations of carbon fluxes in Equatorial Asia.
Several sensitivity experiments demonstrated that aircraft observations
could measure fire signals, though they showed a certain degree of
sensitivity to prior fire-emission data. The inversions coherently estimated
smaller fire emissions than the prior data, partially because of the small
contribution of peatland fires indicated by enhancement ratios of CO and
CO2 observed by the ship. In future warmer climate conditions,
Equatorial Asia may experience more severe droughts, which risks releasing a
large amount of carbon into the atmosphere. Therefore, the continuation of
aircraft and shipboard observations is fruitful for reliable monitoring of
carbon fluxes in Equatorial Asia.