Radiative impacts of the Australian bushfires 2019–2020 – Part 2: Large-scale and in-vortex radiative heating

Sellitto, Pasquale; Belhadji, Redha; Cuesta, Juan; Podglajen, Aurélien; Legras, Bernard

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15523-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 24

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15523-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15523-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 24

Research article

|

19 Dec 2023

Research article |

| 19 Dec 2023

Radiative impacts of the Australian bushfires 2019–2020 – Part 2: Large-scale and in-vortex radiative heating

Pasquale Sellitto, Redha Belhadji, Juan Cuesta, Aurélien Podglajen, and Bernard Legras

Data sets

CALIPSO Lidar Level 1B Profile, Validated Stage 1 V3-41 NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/CALIOP/CALIPSO/CAL_LID_L1-VALSTAGE1-V3-41

OMPS-NPP L2 LP Aerosol Extinction Vertical Profile swath daily 3slit V2 Ghassan Taha https://doi.org/10.5067/CX2B9NW6FI27

Short summary

Record-breaking wildfires ravaged south-eastern Australia during the fire season 2019–2020. These fires injected a smoke plume in the stratosphere, which dispersed over the whole Southern Hemisphere and interacted with solar and terrestrial radiation. A number of detached smoke bubbles were also observed emanating from this plume and ascending quickly to over 35 km altitude. Here we study how absorption of radiation generated ascending motion of both the the hemispheric plume and the vortices.