Wildfires heat the middle troposphere over the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau during the peak of fire season

Pei, Qiaomin; Zhao, Chuanfeng; Yang, Yikun; Chen, Annan; Cong, Zhiyuan; Wan, Xin; Zhang, Haotian; Wu, Guangming

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-10443-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 18

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-10443-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-10443-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 18

Research article

|

15 Sep 2025

Research article |

| 15 Sep 2025

Wildfires heat the middle troposphere over the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau during the peak of fire season

Qiaomin Pei, Chuanfeng Zhao, Yikun Yang, Annan Chen, Zhiyuan Cong, Xin Wan, Haotian Zhang, and Guangming Wu

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-10443-2025-supplement

Data sets

VIIRS (NOAA-21/JPSS-2) I Band 375\,m Active Fire Product NRT (Vector data) NASA https://doi.org/10.5067/FIRMS/MODIS/MCD14DL.NRT.0061

Integration dataset of Tibet Plateau boundary Z. Yili https://doi.org/10.11888/Geogra.tpdc.270099

TP-PROFILE monitoring of the troposphere over the Tibetan Plateau (2021--2022) C. X. Ma Yaoming https://doi.org/10.11888/Atmos.tpdc.272995

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Short summary

This study investigates the impact of smoke on atmospheric warming over the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (HTP) using MODIS fire data, ground-based and satellite aerosol observations, and model simulations. It finds that smoke aerosols, predominantly concentrated between 6 and 8 km in the mid-troposphere over southern HTP, likely alter regional atmospheric stability by modifying the vertical temperature profile, as indicated by a reduced lapse rate.