A global database of smoke injection heights from landscape fires: an analysis of 2009-2010
Abstract
Landscape fires are a global phenomenon that impact communities and the environment on a local, regional and global scale. Specifically, smoke emissions from fires deteriorate air quality in local communities, influence the dispersion of nutrients at regional scales and can modify climate regionally and even globally. There are several ongoing efforts to map the temporal and spatial distribution of landscape fire emissions, yet, to-date there has been little effort to quantify smoke plume injections heights at the global scale. Information about the global distribution is useful to regional fire and global climate modelers. We used the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) and Moderate Resolution Imaging SpectoRadiomenter (MODIS) instruments and the the MISR INteractive eXplorer (MINX) software program to identify and quantify the injection heights of smoke plumes at the global scale for 2009-2010. Here we present results from this effort. Smoke plume heights are presented by latitude and geographic region and compared with lidar data from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). Our observations suggest higher smoke plumes in mixed savanna and mid (and high) latitude evergreen ecoregions and substantially lower smoke plumes in humid tropical climates (peat forests).
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMGC42C..04L
- Keywords:
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- 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 3390 Wildland fire model;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE