Emissions of Greenhouse Gases and Fine Particles (PM2.5) from Wildland Fires in the United States from 2003 to 2011

Wildland fires not only affect adjacent communities, but also produce smoke that can travel long distances and significantly impact downwind communities, alter weather patterns, and contribute to global climate change. As air quality standards have tightened, smoke from wildland fires has faced greater scrutiny from the air quality management community. Wildland fire emissions in the United States from 2003 to 2011 were estimated using the SmartFire2 system and the BlueSky Smoke Modeling Framework. Based on various sources of observational fire activity data, including ground-based incident reports and satellite-derived fire perimeters, fire information was reconciled and passed through a chain of models that estimate fuel loading, fuel consumption, and smoke emissions. While the spatial and temporal distributions of prescribed fires follow a stable pattern, wildfires are difficult to predict and their effects vary greatly from fire to fire. We analyzed the area burned and the emissions of select greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) and fine particles (PM2.5) from the model outputs to characterize long-term temporal and spatial variations. We will present these results, discuss factors that cause variability and uncertainty, and make comparisons to typical global modeling methods.