Wildfire smoke in the lower stratosphere identified by in situ CO observations

Hooghiem, Joram J. D.; Popa, Maria Elena; Röckmann, Thomas; Grooß, Jens-Uwe; Tritscher, Ines; Müller, Rolf; Kivi, Rigel; Chen, Huilin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-13985-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-13985-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-13985-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 22

Research article

|

19 Nov 2020

Research article |

| 19 Nov 2020

Wildfire smoke in the lower stratosphere identified by in situ CO observations

Joram J. D. Hooghiem, Maria Elena Popa, Thomas Röckmann, Jens-Uwe Grooß, Ines Tritscher, Rolf Müller, Rigel Kivi, and Huilin Chen

Data sets

CALIPSO Lidar Level 1B profile data NASA Langley Atmospheric Science Data Center DAAC https://doi.org/10.5067/CALIOP/CALIPSO/CAL_LID_L1-VALSTAGE1-V3-40

FRM4GHG level2 dataset from the Sodankylä campaign, Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy M. K. Sha, M. De Mazière, J. Notholt, T. Blumenstock, H. Chen, D. Griffith, F. Hase, P. Heikkinen, A. Hoffmann, M. Huebner, N. Jones, R. Kivi, C. Petri, Q. Tu, T. Warneke, and D. Weidmann https://doi.org/10.18758/71021048

Short summary

Wildfires release a large quantity of pollutants that can reach the stratosphere through pyro-convection events. In September 2017, a stratospheric plume was accidentally sampled during balloon soundings in northern Finland. The source of the plume was identified to be wildfire smoke based on in situ measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) and stable isotope analysis of CO. Furthermore, the age of the plume was estimated using backwards transport modelling to be ~24 d, with its origin in Canada.