A new dataset of emissions of trace gases and particles resulting from biomass burning has been developed for the historical and the recent period (1900–2005). The purpose of this work is to provide ...a consistent gridded emissions dataset of atmospheric chemical species from 1900 to 2005 for chemistry-climate simulations. The inventory is built in two steps. First, fire emissions are estimated for the recent period (1997–2005) using satellite products (GBA2000 burnt areas and ATSR fire hotspots); the temporal and spatial distribution of the CO
2 emissions for the 1997–2005 period is estimated through a calibration of ATSR fire hotspots. The historical inventory, covering the 1900–2000 period on a decadal basis, is derived from the historical reconstruction of burned areas from
Mouillot and Field (2005). The historical emissions estimates are forced, for each main ecosystem, to agree with the recent inventory estimates, ensuring consistency between past and recent emissions.
The methodology used for estimating the fire emissions is discussed, together with the time evolution of biomass burning emissions during the 20th century, first at the global scale and then for specific regions. The results are compared with the distributions provided by other inventories and results of inverse modeling studies.
Aerosol modeling is a challenging scientific problem aimed at improving our knowledge in the many complex processes involved in multiphase chemistry and transport. Correct simulations of aerosols are ...also required in order to elaborate particle emission reduction strategies. The CHIMERE chemistry transport model (Atmos. Environ. 35 (2001) 6277) has been improved to account for particle transport, formation, deposition at the European scale. The aerosol model accounts both for inorganic
(NO
3
−
,
SO
4
2−
,
NH
4
+)
and organic species of primary or secondary origin. Secondary organic aerosols from biogenic and anthropogenic gas precursors are partitioned into gas and particulate phases through a temperature dependent partition coefficient. The modeling approach is presented in this paper with preliminary simulation results over Europe. Comparisons with available data at background stations give acceptable results on PM
10, with correlation coefficients usually exceeding 0.5 and normalized errors in the 30–80% range in many regions. However, results on sulfate, nitrate and ammonium species display less correct error statistics. Comparisons on sulfate concentrations give normalized errors in the range 30–80% in summer and less correct in winter. Temporal correlation coefficients usually range from 0.30 to 0.70. Nitrate concentrations are better simulated during winter than during summer. Difficulties in simulating heterogeneous and aqueous phase processes could explain model deficiencies. Moreover, temperature dependence of gas/particle partitioning processes for nitrate, ammonium and secondary organic species could mainly explain the seasonal variability of biases. Model deficiencies are observed in Southern countries, certainly due to natural dust emissions and resuspended particles. Finally, sea salts seems to have a quite significant influence on error statistics in coastal areas.
A wildfire is an uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or a wilderness area. The United Nation International Strategy for Disaster Reduction estimates ...that between 3 and 4 million km2 are affected by wildfire annually, with 18 000 km2 occurring in Europe. The Mediterranean region is one of the most affected regions by wildfires in Europe. Nearly 500 000 ha, on average, are burned annually by 50 000 wildfires in the countries of southern Europe bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Wildfires or biomass burning seriously damage ecosystems and affect public health. A major difficulty related to the assessment of health impact of wildfire emissions derives from the complexity of wildfire exposure assessments. Based on the literature, several methods, including satellite data, chemical transport models and, less often, personal exposure monitoring are available. However, few investigations have used methods allowing separating wildfires emissions from air pollutants emissions from urban sources having the same components. An inventory of wildfires occurred in Europe between 2006 and 2010 was obtained in terms of burnt areas, duration and related emissions of major air pollutants (black carbon, particulate matter), as obtained using a hybrid model that allows excluding anthropic sources of air pollution.
•Review of methods used to assess wildfire exposure and related health impact.•Discussion of uncertainties of exposure assessment in the literature.•Application of methods which allowed to have emissions at local area.•Inventory of wildfire emissions in Europe from 2006 to 2010.
The European Union (EU)-funded project Dynamics–Aerosol–Chemistry–Cloud Interactions in West Africa (DACCIWA) investigates the relationship between weather, climate, and air pollution in southern ...West Africa—an area with rapid population growth, urbanization, and increase in anthropogenic aerosol emissions. The air over this region contains a unique mixture of natural and anthropogenic gases, liquid droplets, and particles, emitted in an environment in which multilayer clouds frequently form. These exert a large influence on the local weather and climate, mainly owing to their impact on radiation, the surface energy balance, and thus the diurnal cycle of the atmospheric boundary layer.
In June and July 2016, DACCIWA organized a major international field campaign in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. Three supersites in Kumasi, Savè, and Ile-Ife conducted permanent measurements and 15 intensive observation periods. Three European aircraft together flew 50 research flights between 27 June and 16 July 2016, for a total of 155 h. DACCIWA scientists launched weather balloons several times a day across the region (772 in total), measured urban emissions, and evaluated health data. The main objective was to build robust statistics of atmospheric composition, dynamics, and low-level cloud properties in various chemical landscapes to investigate their mutual interactions.
This article presents an overview of the DACCIWA field campaign activities as well as some first research highlights. The rich data obtained during the campaign will be made available to the scientific community and help to advance scientific understanding, modeling, and monitoring the atmosphere over southern West Africa.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The CAPITOUL experiment is a joint experimental effort in urban climate, including the energetic exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere, the dynamics of the boundary layer over the city and ...its interactions with aerosol chemistry. The campaign took place in the city of Toulouse in southwest France, for one year, from February 2004 to February 2005. This allowed the study of both the day-to-day and seasonal variability of urban climate processes. The observational network included surface stations (meteorology, energy balance, chemistry), profilers and, during intensive observing periods, aircraft and balloons. The urban Surface Energy Balance differs between summer and winter: in summer, the solar heat stored during the previous daytime period is enough to maintain the heat release at night, but in winter, almost all the energy comes from the anthropogenic heat released by space heating. Both processes produce the well known Urban Heat Island (UHI). The city is shown to impact the entire boundary layer on specific days, when an urban breeze is observed. In wintertime, fog is found to be modified due to the vertical structure of the nocturnal boundary layer above the city (which is slightly unstable and not stable). The measurements of aerosol properties in and downwind the city permitted documentation of the urban aerosol as well as the chemical transformation of these aerosols, in particular the ageing of carbonaceous aerosols during transport. The Toulouse aerosol is mainly composed of carbonaceous particles. There is important seasonal variation in the ratio of black carbon to organic carbon, in the concentration of sulfates and nitrates and in the related radiative aerosol impacts. SF₆ was released as a tracer in a suburban area of Toulouse during anticyclonic conditions with weak winds. The tracer measurements show dispersion was mainly driven by the surface sensible heat flux, and was highly sensitive to the urban heat island and also to the transport of boundary layer clouds. Modeling was fully integrated into the campaign. Surface energy balance and urban boundary layer processes have already been used to complement the analyses of the physical processes observed during the campaign. Companion papers detail most of these observation or modeling studies.
We compare five global inventories of monthly CO emissions named VGT, ATSR, MODIS, GFED3 and MOPITT based on remotely sensed active fires and/or burned area products for the year 2003. The objective ...is to highlight similarities and differences by focusing on the geographical and temporal distribution and on the emissions for three broad land cover classes (forest, savanna/grassland and agriculture). Globally, CO emissions for the year 2003 range between 365 Tg CO (GFED3) and 1422 Tg CO (VGT). Despite the large uncertainty in the total amounts, some common spatial patterns typical of biomass burning can be identified in the boreal forests of Siberia, in agricultural areas of Eastern Europe and Russia and in savanna ecosystems of South America, Africa and Australia. Regionally, the largest difference in terms of total amounts (CV > 100%) and seasonality is observed at the northernmost latitudes, especially in North America and Siberia where VGT appears to overestimate the area affected by fires. On the contrary, Africa shows the best agreement both in terms of total annual amounts (CV = 31%) and of seasonality despite some overestimation of emissions from forest and agriculture observed in the MODIS inventory. In Africa VGT provides the most reliable seasonality. Looking at the broad land cover types, the range of contribution to the global emissions of CO is 64–74%, 23–32% and 3–4% for forest, savanna/grassland and agriculture, respectively. These results suggest that there is still large uncertainty in global estimates of emissions and it increases if the comparison is carried by out taking into account the temporal (month) and spatial (0.5° × 0.5° cell) dimensions. Besides the area affected by fires, also vegetation characteristics and conditions at the time of burning should also be accurately parameterized since they can greatly influence the global estimates of CO emissions.
Along with some research networking programmes, the European Directive 2008/50/CE requires chemical speciation of fine aerosol (PM2.5), including elemental (EC) and organic carbon (OC), at a few ...rural sites in European countries. Meanwhile, the thermal-optical technique is considered by the European and US networking agencies and normalisation bodies as a reference method to quantify EC–OC collected on filters. Although commonly used for many years, this technique still suffers from a lack of information on the comparability of the different analytical protocols (temperature protocols, type of optical correction) currently applied in the laboratories. To better evaluate the EC–OC data set quality and related uncertainties, the French National Reference Laboratory for Ambient Air Quality Monitoring (LCSQA) organised an EC–OC comparison exercise for French laboratories using different thermal-optical methods (five laboratories only). While there is good agreement on total carbon (TC) measurements among all participants, some differences can be observed on the EC / TC ratio, even among laboratories using the same thermal protocol. These results led to further tests on the influence of the optical correction: results obtained from different European laboratories confirmed that there were higher differences between OCTOT and OCTOR measured with NIOSH 5040 in comparison to EUSAAR-2. Also, striking differences between ECTOT / ECTOR ratios can be observed when comparing results obtained for rural and urban samples, with ECTOT being 50% lower than ECTOR at rural sites whereas it is only 20% lower at urban sites. The PM chemical composition could explain these differences but the way it influences the EC–OC measurement is not clear and needs further investigation. Meanwhile, some additional tests seem to indicate an influence of oven soiling on the EC–OC measurement data quality. This highlights the necessity to follow the laser signal decrease with time and its impact on measurements. Nevertheless, this should be confirmed by further experiments, involving more samples and various instruments, to enable statistical processing. All these results provide insights to determine the quality of EC–OC analytical methods and may contribute to the work toward establishing method standardisation.
The purpose of this work is to investigate the direct radiative forcing of aerosols over the supersite of Djougou (northern Benin) during the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses dry season ...experiment. We focus our simulations on the top of atmosphere, bottom of atmosphere, and atmosphere radiative forcings. During the dry season period, Sun photometer measurements indicate a rather turbid atmosphere with a mean aerosol optical depth for the overall period of 0.78 ± 0.24 (at 440 nm). The aerosol absorption coefficient estimated at the surface ranged between 2.3 and 37.3 Mm−1 (mean value 15.2 ± 10.6 Mm−1 at 520 nm) and the scattering coefficient between 44.5 and 232.3 Mm−1 (mean 145 ± 59 Mm−1 at 520 nm). This leads to a single scattering albedo of between 0.81 and 0.98 (at 520 nm) with a mean (and standard deviation) value of 0.91 ± 0.05, indicating moderately absorbing aerosols. In parallel, micropulse lidar measurements indicate the presence of two distinct aerosol layers, with a first one located between the surface and 1 km and a second one located above 1.5–4.0 km. On the basis of surface and aircraft observations, sunphotometer measurements, lidar profiles, and Moderate Resolution Imagaing Spectroradiometer sensor an estimation of the daily clear sky direct radiative forcing has been estimated for the 17–24 January 2006 period. Simulations indicate that aerosols reduce significantly the solar energy reaching the surface (mean ΔFBOA = −61.5 W/m2) by reflection to space (mean ΔFTOA = −18.4 W/m2) but predominantly by absorption of the solar radiation into the atmosphere (mean ΔFATM = +43.1 W/m2). The mean heating rate at the surface and within the elevated biomass burning layer is considerably enhanced by 1.50 and 1.90 K day−1, respectively.
The atmospheric nitrogen budget depends on emission and deposition fluxes both as reduced and oxidized nitrogen compounds. In this study, a first attempt at estimating the Sahel nitrogen budget for ...the year 2006 is made, through measurements and simulations at three stations from the IDAF network situated in dry savanna ecosystems. Dry deposition fluxes are estimated from measurements of NO2, HNO3 and NH3 gaseous concentrations and from simulated dry deposition velocities, and wet deposition fluxes are calculated from NH4+ and NO3− concentrations in samples of rain. Emission fluxes are estimated including biogenic emission of NO from soils (an Artificial Neural Network module has been inserted into the ISBA-SURFEX surface model), emission of NOx and NH3 from domestic fires and biomass burning, and volatilization of NH3 from animal excreta. Uncertainties are calculated for each contribution of the budget. This study uses original and unique data from remote and hardly-ever-explored regions.The monthly evolution of oxidized N compounds shows that emission and deposition increase at the beginning of the rainy season because of large emissions of biogenic NO (pulse events). Emission of oxidized compounds is dominated by biogenic emission from soils (domestic fires and biomass burning of oxidized compounds account for 0 to 13% at the most at the annual scale, depending on the station), whereas emission of NH3 is dominated by the process of volatilization from soils. At the annual scale, the average gaseous dry deposition accounts for 47% of the total estimated deposition flux, for both oxidized and reduced compounds. The average estimated wet plus dry deposition flux in dry savanna ecosystems is 7.5±1.8 kgN ha−1 yr−1, with approximately 30% attributed to oxidized compounds, and the rest attributed to NHx. The average estimated emission flux ranges from 8.4(±3.8) to 12.4(±5.9) kgN ha−1 yr−1, dominated by NH3 volatilization (72–82%) and biogenic emission from soils (11–17%), depending on the applied volatilization rate of NH3. While larger, emission fluxes are on the same order of magnitude as deposition fluxes. The main uncertainties are linked to the NH3 emission from volatilization. When scaled up from the 3 measurement sites to the Sahelian region (12° N:18° N, 15° W:10° E), the estimated total emission ranges from 2(±0.9) to 3(±1.4) TgN yr−1, depending on the applied volatilization rate of NH3 and estimated total deposition is 1.8(±0.4) TgN yr−1. The dry savanna ecosystems of the Sahel contribute around 2% to the global (biogenic + anthropogenic) nitrogen budget.
We have developed detailed emission inventories for the amount of both black and organic carbon particles from biomass burning sources (wood fuel, charcoal burning, dung, charcoal production, ...agricultural, savanna and forest fires). We have also estimated an inventory for organic carbon particles from fossil fuel burning and urban activities from an existing inventory for fossil fuel sources of black carbon. We also provide an estimate for the natural source of organic matter. These emissions have been used together with our global aerosol model to study the global distribution of carbonaceous aerosols. The accuracy of the inventories and the model formulation has been tested by comparing the model simulations of carbonaceous aerosols in the atmosphere and in precipitation with observations reported in the literature. For most locations and seasons, the predicted concentrations are in reasonable agreement with the observations, although the model underpredicts black carbon concentrations in polar regions. The predicted concentrations in remote areas are extremely sensitive to both the rate of removal by wet deposition and the height of injection of the aerosols. Finally, a global map of the aerosol single scattering albedo was developed from the simulated carbonaceous particle distribution and a previously developed model for aerosol sulfates. The computed aerosol single scattering albedos compare well with observations, suggesting that most of the important aerosol species have been included in the model. For most locations and seasons, the single scattering albedo is larger than 0.85, indicating that these aerosols, in general, lead to a net cooling.
PDF
