The impacts of wildfires on ozone production and boundary layer dynamics in California's Central Valley

Pan, Keming; Faloona, Ian C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9681-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 14

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9681-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9681-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 14

Research article

|

29 Jul 2022

Research article |

| 29 Jul 2022

The impacts of wildfires on ozone production and boundary layer dynamics in California's Central Valley

Keming Pan and Ian C. Faloona

Data sets

Air Quality Data, Air Quality and Meteorological Information System California Air Resources Board https://www.arb.ca.gov/aqmis2/aqmis2.php

Solar Radiation Measurements California Irrigation Management Information System https://cimis. water.ca.gov/WSNReportCriteria.aspx

Physical Sciences Laboratory: Climate Analysis and Plotting Tools NOAA https://psl.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/data/getpage.pl

Data Queries, MADIS AirNow-Tech https://www.airnowtech.org/data/index.cfm

Short summary

This work represents a unique analysis of 10 existing air quality network sites and meteorological sites, two AmeriFlux sites, and a radio acoustic sounding system in the Central Valley of California during five consecutive fire seasons, June through September, from 2016 to 2020. We find that the ozone production rate increases by ~ 50 % during wildfire influenced periods. Wildfire smoke also decreases the heat flux by 30 % and results in 12 % lower mixed-layer height.