The Untold Story of Pyrocumulonimbus

Fromm, M.; Lindsey, Daniel T.; Servranckx, R.; Yue, Glenn K.; Trickl, Thomas; Sica, R. J.; Doucet, Paul; Godin‐Beekmann, Sophie

doi:10.1175/2010bams3004.1

Cited by 302 publications

(357 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Thick clouds obscure underlying UVbackscattering layers (Penning de Vries and Wagner, 2011), hence the enhanced AI here means the smoke is mixed with or situated above deep, opaque cloud tops. Double-digit AI values have been shown to be indicative of optically dense, high-altitude smoke plumes (Guan et al, 2010;Fromm et al, 2010). Hence the OMI AI and MODIS visible plus MODIS BT together indicate a substantial mass of smoke aerosols in the uppermost troposphere and tropopause region, injected by the Wollemi pyroCb.…”

Section: Novembermentioning

confidence: 99%

Pyrocumulonimbus pair in Wollemi and Blue Mountains National Parks, 22 November 2006

Fromm¹,

McRae²,

Sharples³

et al. 2013

AMOJ

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Section: Novembermentioning

confidence: 99%

Pyrocumulonimbus pair in Wollemi and Blue Mountains National Parks, 22 November 2006

Fromm¹,

McRae²,

Sharples³

et al. 2013

AMOJ

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“…Our knowledge about the global variability of vertical emission distributions is even more limited than our knowledge about the plume heights. However, Luderer et al (2006) and Fromm et al (2010) showed in modeling, as well as observational case studies, that rare but extraordinarily high injections might emit a large fraction of the emissions into the upper part of the plumes. To account for this, we perform one sensitivity study, in which we emit 50 % of the total emissions into the uppermost layer of the plume and we distribute the remaining 50 % uniformly (constant mass mixing ratio) into the model layers below (SOFIEV-TOP-INJECTION).…”

Section: Vertical Distribution Of Wildfire Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fire emission heights in the climate system – Part 2: Impact on transport, black carbon concentrations and radiation

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Wildfires represent a major source for aerosols impacting atmospheric radiation, atmospheric chemistry and cloud micro-physical properties. Previous case studies indicated that the height of the aerosol-radiation interaction may crucially affect atmospheric radiation, but the sensitivity to emission heights has been examined with only a few models and is still uncertain. In this study we use the general circulation model ECHAM6 extended by the aerosol module HAM2 to investigate the impact of wildfire emission heights on atmospheric long-range transport, black carbon (BC) concentrations and atmospheric radiation. We simulate the wildfire aerosol release using either various versions of a semiempirical plume height parametrization or prescribed standard emission heights in ECHAM6-HAM2. Extreme scenarios of near-surface or free-tropospheric-only injections provide lower and upper constraints on the emission height climate impact. We find relative changes in mean global atmospheric BC burden of up to 7.9 ± 4.4 % caused by average changes in emission heights of 1.5-3.5 km. Regionally, changes in BC burden exceed 30-40 % in the major biomass burning regions. The model evaluation of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) against Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) and Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) observations indicates that the implementation of a plume height parametrization slightly reduces the ECHAM6-HAM2 biases regionally, but on the global scale these improvements in model performance are small. For prescribed emission release at the surface, wildfire emissions entail a total sky top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative forcing (RF) of −0.16 ± 0.06 W m −2 . The application of a plume height parametrization which agrees reasonably well with observations introduces a slightly stronger negative TOA RF of −0.20 ± 0.07 W m −2 . The standard ECHAM6-HAM2 model in which 25 % of the wildfire emissions are injected into the free troposphere (FT) and 75 % into the planetary boundary layer (PBL), leads to a TOA RF of −0.24 ± 0.06 W m −2 . Overall, we conclude that simple plume height parametrizations provide sufficient representations of emission heights for global climate modeling. Significant improvements in aerosol wildfire modeling likely depend on better emission inventories and aerosol process modeling rather than on improved emission height parametrizations.

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“…Black carbon constitutes a small fraction of the total carbon (Schwarz et al, 2010;Friberg et al, 2014). Occasionally chemical elements connected with crustal matter and fires are observed (Papaspiropoulos et al, 2002), which on rare occasions can have a strong influence on aerosol particle concentration (Eguchi et al, 2009;Dirksen et al, 2009;Fromm et al, 2010). Particles from explosive volcanism have strong effects on the studied region at times, affecting the climate (Ammann et al, 2003;Solomon et al, 2011), stratospheric ozone (McCormick et al, 1995) and aviation (Gislason et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison between CARIBIC Aerosol Samples Analysed by Accelerator-Based Methods and Optical Particle Counter Measurements

et al. 2014

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Abstract. Inter-comparison of results from two kinds of aerosol systems in the CARIBIC (Civil Aircraft for the Regular Investigation of the atmosphere Based on a Instrument Container) passenger aircraft based observatory, operating during intercontinental flights at 9-12 km altitude, is presented. Aerosol from the lowermost stratosphere (LMS), the extra-tropical upper troposphere (UT) and the tropical mid troposphere (MT) were investigated. Aerosol particle volume concentration measured with an optical particle counter (OPC) is compared with analytical results of the sum of masses of all major and several minor constituents from aerosol samples collected with an impactor. Analyses were undertaken with the following accelerator-based methods: particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and particle elastic scattering analysis (PESA). Data from 48 flights during 1 year are used, leading to a total of 106 individual comparisons. The ratios of the particle volume from the OPC and the total mass from the analyses were in 84 % within a relatively narrow interval. Data points outside this interval are connected with inlet-related effects in clouds, large variability in aerosol composition, particle size distribution effects and some cases of non-ideal sampling. Overall, the comparison of these two CARIBIC measurements based on vastly different methods show good agreement, implying that the chemical and size information can be combined in studies of the MT/UT/LMS aerosol.

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The Untold Story of Pyrocumulonimbus

Cited by 302 publications

References 47 publications

Pyrocumulonimbus pair in Wollemi and Blue Mountains National Parks, 22 November 2006

Pyrocumulonimbus pair in Wollemi and Blue Mountains National Parks, 22 November 2006

Fire emission heights in the climate system – Part 2: Impact on transport, black carbon concentrations and radiation

Comparison between CARIBIC Aerosol Samples Analysed by Accelerator-Based Methods and Optical Particle Counter Measurements

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