Detection of the long-range transport of wildfire pollution to the Arctic using a network of ground-based FTIR spectrometers, satellite observations and model result

Erik Lutsch (1) , Stephanie Conway (1) , Kimberly Strong (1) , Dylan B. A. Jones (1) , James R. Drummond (2) , Ivan Ortega (3) , James W. Hannigan (3) , Maria Makarova (4) , Justus Notholt (5) , Thomas Blumenstock (6) , Ralf Sussmann (7) , Emmanuel Mahieu (8) , Yasuko Kasai (9) , Cathy Clerbaux (10, 11)

1 Department of Physics [Toronto]
2 Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science [Halifax]
3 NCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research [Boulder]
4 SPbU - St Petersburg State University
5 IUP - Institute of Environmental Physics [Bremen]
6 IMK - Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research
7 IMK-IFU - Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung - Atmosphärische Umweltforschung
8 Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique [Liège]
9 NICT - National Institute of Information and Communications Technology [Tokyo]
10 Spectroscopie de l'atmosphère, Service de Chimie Quantique et Photophysique
11 TROPO - LATMOS

We present a multi-year time series of the total columns of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and ethane (C₂H₆) obtained by Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrometer measurements at nine sites. Six are high-latitude sites: Eureka, Nunavut; Ny Alesund, Norway; Thule, Greenland; Kiruna, Sweden; Poker Flat, Alaska and St. Petersburg, Russia and three are mid-latitude sites; Zugspitze, Germany; Jungfraujoch, Switzerland and Toronto, Ontario. For each site, the inter-annual trends and seasonal variabilities of the CO total column time series are accounted for, allowing ambient concentrations to be determined. Enhancements above ambient levels are then used to identify possible wildfire pollution events. Since the abundance of each trace gas species emitted in a wildfire event is specific to the type of vegetation burned and the burning phase, correlations of CO to the other long-lived wildfire tracers HCN and C₂H₆ allow for further confirmation of the detection of wildfire pollution. Back-trajectories from HYSPLIT and FLEXPART as well as fire detections from the Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) allow the source regions of the detected enhancements to be determined while satellite observations of CO from the Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) instruments can be used to track the transport of the smoke plume. Differences in travel times between sites allows ageing of biomass burning plumes to be determined, providing a means to infer the physical and chemical processes affecting the loss of each species during transport. Comparisons of ground-based FTIR measurements to GEOS-Chem chemical transport model results are used to investigate these processes, evaluate wildfire emission inventories and infer the influence of wildfire emissions on the Arctic.

Domaines: Sciences de l'environnement

Erik Lutsch, Stephanie Conway, Kimberly Strong, Dylan B. A. Jones, James R. Drummond, et al.. Detection of the long-range transport of wildfire pollution to the Arctic using a network of ground-based FTIR spectrometers, satellite observations and model result. AGU Fall Meeting , Dec 2017, New Orleans, United States. ⟨insu-01674371⟩