[ISP] Seminar Reminder tomorrow

[Christine Wiedinmyer]

Modeling of Boreal Forest Fire Smoke and Contribution to Black Carbon 
Loading and Deposition in the Arctic

David Lavoué
DL Modeling and Research
Brampton, Ontario

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
3:00 -- Refreshments & Socializing
3:30 -- Seminar
Foothills Lab 2, Room 1001

Abstract
Forest fires are frequently the main cause of poor air quality in the 
Canadian western communities, such as British Columbia Interior in 2003. 
In recent years, long-range transport of wildfire smoke plumes to urban 
areas, for example Montreal and Toronto in 2002, resulted in 
deteriorated air quality as well. A wildfire emission model based on the 
Canadian Forest Fire Behaviour Prediction (FBP) System was applied to 
forest fires in Canada from 2000 to 2004. Fire datasets were compiled 
from records of provincial, territorial, and federal management 
agencies. Fuel consumption was calculated hourly from forest fuel 
patterns and meteorological conditions from the Canadian weather 
forecast model GEM. The model estimated emissions of about 20 chemical 
species such as greenhouse gases, VOCs, and PM. And injection heights 
were calculated with the energy released during combustion.

In addition, a dynamic emission model was developed to calculate 
wildfire growth and emissions at the horizontal resolution of a few 
hundred meters for time steps < 1 hour. The fire front spread is 
calculated with an elliptical wavelet propagation technique driven by 
GEM weather. To improve air quality forecasts across Canada, the 
wildfire dynamic emission model is currently being integrated in the new 
Canadian air quality prediction model GEM-MACH15.
Finally, ten years of carbonaceous aerosol atmospheric transport were 
simulated from 1995 to 2004 at 1x1 deg with the multi-scale air quality 
modeling system GEM-AQ/EC. Monthly emission inventories from boreal 
wildland fires were built from a combination of reports from fire 
agencies and satellite products. For Canada, we used the 1995-1999 large 
fire database (>200 ha) to complete the previous emission dataset 
2000-2004. With respect to Alaska, Russia, and Mongolia, burn scars were 
used to determine annual areas burned and monthly variability was 
inferred from MODIS and ATSR fire pixels. GEM-AQ/EC was run with 
constant anthropogenic emissions of the 1990's. The relative 
contribution of boreal wildland fires to monthly black carbon loading 
was calculated for different Arctic regions. Deposition on Arctic sea 
ice and Greenland was also quantified.
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