© Author(s) 2009. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

• Main Author: P. Ciais
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: The Landing; Yakutsk; Siberia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.650.1628; http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/9315/2009/acp-9-9315-2009.pdf

Abstract. We present airborne measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), equiv-alent black carbon (EBC) and ultra fine particles over North-Eastern Siberia in July 2008 performed during the YAK-AEROSIB/POLARCAT experiment. During a “golden day” (11 July 2008) a number of biomass burning plumes were encountered with CO mixing ratio enhancements of up to 500 ppb relative to a background of 90 ppb. Number con-centrations of aerosols in the size range 3.5–200 nm peaked at 4000 cm−3 and the EBC content reached 1.4 µg m−3. These high concentrations were caused by forest fires in the vicinity of the landing airport in Yakutsk where measure-ments in fresh smoke could be made during the descent. We estimate a combustion efficiency of 90 ± 3 % based on CO and CO2 measurements and a CO emission factor of