Comparison between wildfire emissions in the Pacific Northwest calculated using the BLUESKY air quality framework and calculated using MODIS fire energy satellite data

The frequency and intensity of wildfires are expected to increase in the Western United States as a result of climate change. Such changes may have a profound effect on the concentration of airborne pollutants at downwind locations. Of particular concern are the potential changes in surface ozone and particulate matter, elevated concentrations of which have deleterious effects on human health. Regional air quality models are an important tool for the atmospheric scientists and for the air quality managers. In these models, accurate estimates of emissions of airborne pollutants from fires are important during the summer fire season, and will become increasingly important. However, there are significant problems in obtaining accurate emissions estimates stemming from inaccurate and missing high resolution data about and models of fuels, fire behavior and meteorological factors. A complementary method of estimating fire emissions, which makes use of satellite observations of fire radiative energy and smoke associated with fires, has been used to some success. In this study, we compare the fire emissions calculated using the implementation of the Bluesky framework in the AIRPACT-4 regional air quality system for the Pacific Northwest United States, with fire emissions calculated using MODIS Fire Radiative Power data, for specific fires. Comparison of the differences between emissions estimates for specific fires may provide insight on effect of various geographical and meteorological factors on them.