How emissions uncertainty influences the distribution and  radiative impacts of smoke from fires in North America

Carter, Therese S.; Heald, Colette L.; Jimenez, Jose L.; Campuzano-Jost, Pedro; Kondo, Yutaka; Moteki, Nobuhiro; Schwarz, Joshua P.; Wiedinmyer, Christine; Darmenov, Anton S.; da Silva, Arlindo M.; Kaiser, Johannes W.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-2073-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-2073-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-2073-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

Research article

|

26 Feb 2020

Research article |

| 26 Feb 2020

How emissions uncertainty influences the distribution and radiative impacts of smoke from fires in North America

Therese S. Carter, Colette L. Heald, Jose L. Jimenez, Pedro Campuzano-Jost, Yutaka Kondo, Nobuhiro Moteki, Joshua P. Schwarz, Christine Wiedinmyer, Anton S. Darmenov, Arlindo M. da Silva, and Johannes W. Kaiser

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-2073-2020-supplement

Data sets

GEOS-Chem geoschem/geos-chem: GEOS-Chem 12.0.0 release https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1343547

Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments IMPROVE http://vista.cira.colostate.edu/Improve/data-page/

DC3 campaign dataset NCAR https://www.eol.ucar.edu/field_projects/dc3

ARCTAS campaign dataset NASA https://www-air.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ArcView/arctas

Download

Article (12616 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

Fires and the smoke they emit impact air quality, health, and climate, but the abundance and properties of smoke remain uncertain and poorly constrained. To explore this, we compare model simulations driven by four commonly-used fire emission inventories with surface, aloft, and satellite observations. We show that across inventories smoke emissions differ by factors of 4 to 7 over North America, challenging our ability to accurately characterize the impact of smoke on air quality and climate.