Boreal forest fire CO and CH<sub>4</sub> emission factors derived from tower observations in Alaska during the extreme fire season of 2015

Wiggins, Elizabeth B.; Andrews, Arlyn; Sweeney, Colm; Miller, John B.; Miller, Charles E.; Veraverbeke, Sander; Commane, Roisin; Wofsy, Steven; Henderson, John M.; Randerson, James T.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-8557-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-8557-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-8557-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

Research article

|

07 Jun 2021

Research article |

| 07 Jun 2021

Boreal forest fire CO and CH₄ emission factors derived from tower observations in Alaska during the extreme fire season of 2015

Elizabeth B. Wiggins, Arlyn Andrews, Colm Sweeney, John B. Miller, Charles E. Miller, Sander Veraverbeke, Roisin Commane, Steven Wofsy, John M. Henderson, and James T. Randerson

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Final revised paper (published on 07 Jun 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Feb 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of Wiggins et al Boreal Fire EFs', Robert Yokelson, 06 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Feb 2020
RC3: '‚Evidence for a larger contribution of smoldering combustion to boreal forest fire emissions from tower observations in Alaska‘ by Wiggins et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 06 Mar 2020
AC1: 'Author response to referee comments', Liz Wiggins, 11 Aug 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Liz Wiggins on behalf of the Authors (11 Aug 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 Sep 2020) by Astrid Kiendler-Scharr (deceased)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (29 Sep 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (02 Oct 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review on:

Boreal forest fire CO and CH4 emission factors derived from tower observations in Alaska during the extreme fire season of 2015

This paper presents trace gas observations of CO, CH4, and CO2 at the CRV tower to estimate emission factors from boreal forest fires during the Alaska extreme fire season of 2015. The high-quality boreal forest fire smoke measurements are combined with Lagrangian modelling to characterize wildfire emissions.

The work is of high quality and excepting some few points, that need to be addressed, both description and discussion of measurements/modelling are well founded. The manuscript contributes to scientific progress within the scope of the journal, therefore it is suitable to be published in ACP.

General comments:
The resubmitted manuscript has been largely improved. There is only one general point, which needs some detailed discussions. The authors state that PWRF-STILT forward simulations were done (Page7Line25) to determine footprint fields necessary for the convolution with fire emissions from AKFED. To interpret observation at the CRV tower is a classic case of source-receptor studies that usually employ LPDM backward runs starting at the observation site, as shown by Henderson et al. (ACP2015). The authors should comment on that.

Other comments:
Equation 2 still needs small revisions: replace 12.01 by MM_{C} as carbon molar mass; remove g/kg and explain the conversion factor 1000 in text.

Editorial revisions:
- Page2Line34 remove [.
- Page7Line28 a blank is missing between 'likely' and 'caused'
- Page9Line insert 'CO' prior to 'emissions': 'Yet, Table 1 shows CO emission ratios from wildfires in boreal Siberia tend to be higher than emission ratios from North American wildfires'

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RR by Robert Yokelson (01 Nov 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (09 Nov 2020) by Astrid Kiendler-Scharr (deceased)

AR by Liz Wiggins on behalf of the Authors (03 Feb 2021) Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (09 Mar 2021) by Astrid Kiendler-Scharr (deceased)

AR by Liz Wiggins on behalf of the Authors (26 Mar 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

We analyzed high-resolution trace gas measurements collected from a tower in Alaska during a very active fire season to improve our understanding of trace gas emissions from boreal forest fires. Our results suggest previous studies may have underestimated emissions from smoldering combustion in boreal forest fires.