Top-down estimates of biomass burning emissions of black carbon in the western United States

Abstract

We estimate biomass burning and anthropogenic emissions of black carbon (BC) in the western US for May-October 2006 by inverting surface BC concentrations from the Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environment (IMPROVE) network using a global chemical transport model. We first use active fire counts from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to improve the spatiotemporal distributions of the biomass burning BC emissions from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFEDv2). The adjustment primarily shifts emissions from late to middle and early summer (a 33% decrease in September-October and a 56% increase in June-August) and leads to appreciable increases in modeled surface BC concentrations in early and middle summer, especially at the 1-2 and 2-3 km altitude ranges.

Citation

Mao, Y. H.; Li, Q. B.; Chen, D.; Zhang, L.; Hao, W. -M.; Liou, K.-N. 2014. Top-down estimates of biomass burning emissions of black carbon in the western United States. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 14: 7195-7211.