Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions
Highly unusual open fires burned in western Greenland between 31 July and 21 August 2017, after a period of warm, dry and sunny weather. The fires burned on peatlands that became vulnerable to fires by permafrost thawing. We used several satellite data sets to estimate that the total area burned was...
Published in: | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics |
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ftnonlinearchiv:oai:noa.gwlb.de:cop_mods_00003292 2023-05-15T16:23:43+02:00 Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions Evangeliou, Nikolaos Kylling, Arve Eckhardt, Sabine Myroniuk, Viktor Stebel, Kerstin Paugam, Ronan Zibtsev, Sergiy Stohl, Andreas 2019-02 electronic https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1393-2019 https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00003292 https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00003250/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/19/1393/2019/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf eng eng Copernicus Publications Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics -- http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/volumes_and_issues.html -- http://www.bibliothek.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/?2069847 -- 1680-7324 https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1393-2019 https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00003292 https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00003250/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/19/1393/2019/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ uneingeschränkt info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC-BY article Verlagsveröffentlichung article Text doc-type:article 2019 ftnonlinearchiv https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1393-2019 2022-02-08T23:00:39Z Highly unusual open fires burned in western Greenland between 31 July and 21 August 2017, after a period of warm, dry and sunny weather. The fires burned on peatlands that became vulnerable to fires by permafrost thawing. We used several satellite data sets to estimate that the total area burned was about 2345 ha. Based on assumptions of typical burn depths and emission factors for peat fires, we estimate that the fires consumed a fuel amount of about 117 kt C and emitted about 23.5 t of black carbon (BC) and 731 t of organic carbon (OC), including 141 t of brown carbon (BrC). We used a Lagrangian particle dispersion model to simulate the atmospheric transport and deposition of these species. We find that the smoke plumes were often pushed towards the Greenland ice sheet by westerly winds, and thus a large fraction of the emissions (30 %) was deposited on snow- or ice-covered surfaces. The calculated deposition was small compared to the deposition from global sources, but not entirely negligible. Analysis of aerosol optical depth data from three sites in western Greenland in August 2017 showed strong influence of forest fire plumes from Canada, but little impact of the Greenland fires. Nevertheless, CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) lidar data showed that our model captured the presence and structure of the plume from the Greenland fires. The albedo changes and instantaneous surface radiative forcing in Greenland due to the fire emissions were estimated with the SNICAR model and the uvspec model from the libRadtran radiative transfer software package. We estimate that the maximum albedo change due to the BC and BrC deposition was about 0.007, too small to be measured. The average instantaneous surface radiative forcing over Greenland at noon on 31 August was 0.03–0.04 W m−2, with locally occurring maxima of 0.63–0.77 W m−2 (depending on the studied scenario). The average value is up to an order of magnitude smaller than the radiative forcing from other sources. Overall, the fires burning in Greenland in the summer of 2017 had little impact on the Greenland ice sheet, causing a small extra radiative forcing. This was due to the – in a global context – still rather small size of the fires. However, the very large fraction of the emissions deposited on the Greenland ice sheet from these fires could contribute to accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet if these fires become several orders of magnitude larger under future climate. Article in Journal/Newspaper Greenland Ice Ice Sheet permafrost Niedersächsisches Online-Archiv NOA Canada Greenland Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 19 2 1393 1411 |
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Niedersächsisches Online-Archiv NOA |
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language |
English |
topic |
article Verlagsveröffentlichung |
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article Verlagsveröffentlichung Evangeliou, Nikolaos Kylling, Arve Eckhardt, Sabine Myroniuk, Viktor Stebel, Kerstin Paugam, Ronan Zibtsev, Sergiy Stohl, Andreas Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions |
topic_facet |
article Verlagsveröffentlichung |
description |
Highly unusual open fires burned in western Greenland between 31 July and 21 August 2017, after a period of warm, dry and sunny weather. The fires burned on peatlands that became vulnerable to fires by permafrost thawing. We used several satellite data sets to estimate that the total area burned was about 2345 ha. Based on assumptions of typical burn depths and emission factors for peat fires, we estimate that the fires consumed a fuel amount of about 117 kt C and emitted about 23.5 t of black carbon (BC) and 731 t of organic carbon (OC), including 141 t of brown carbon (BrC). We used a Lagrangian particle dispersion model to simulate the atmospheric transport and deposition of these species. We find that the smoke plumes were often pushed towards the Greenland ice sheet by westerly winds, and thus a large fraction of the emissions (30 %) was deposited on snow- or ice-covered surfaces. The calculated deposition was small compared to the deposition from global sources, but not entirely negligible. Analysis of aerosol optical depth data from three sites in western Greenland in August 2017 showed strong influence of forest fire plumes from Canada, but little impact of the Greenland fires. Nevertheless, CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) lidar data showed that our model captured the presence and structure of the plume from the Greenland fires. The albedo changes and instantaneous surface radiative forcing in Greenland due to the fire emissions were estimated with the SNICAR model and the uvspec model from the libRadtran radiative transfer software package. We estimate that the maximum albedo change due to the BC and BrC deposition was about 0.007, too small to be measured. The average instantaneous surface radiative forcing over Greenland at noon on 31 August was 0.03–0.04 W m−2, with locally occurring maxima of 0.63–0.77 W m−2 (depending on the studied scenario). The average value is up to an order of magnitude smaller than the radiative forcing from other sources. Overall, the fires burning in Greenland in the summer of 2017 had little impact on the Greenland ice sheet, causing a small extra radiative forcing. This was due to the – in a global context – still rather small size of the fires. However, the very large fraction of the emissions deposited on the Greenland ice sheet from these fires could contribute to accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet if these fires become several orders of magnitude larger under future climate. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Evangeliou, Nikolaos Kylling, Arve Eckhardt, Sabine Myroniuk, Viktor Stebel, Kerstin Paugam, Ronan Zibtsev, Sergiy Stohl, Andreas |
author_facet |
Evangeliou, Nikolaos Kylling, Arve Eckhardt, Sabine Myroniuk, Viktor Stebel, Kerstin Paugam, Ronan Zibtsev, Sergiy Stohl, Andreas |
author_sort |
Evangeliou, Nikolaos |
title |
Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions |
title_short |
Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions |
title_full |
Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions |
title_fullStr |
Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions |
title_full_unstemmed |
Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions |
title_sort |
open fires in greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of bc, oc and brc emissions |
publisher |
Copernicus Publications |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1393-2019 https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00003292 https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00003250/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/19/1393/2019/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf |
geographic |
Canada Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Canada Greenland |
genre |
Greenland Ice Ice Sheet permafrost |
genre_facet |
Greenland Ice Ice Sheet permafrost |
op_relation |
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics -- http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/volumes_and_issues.html -- http://www.bibliothek.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/?2069847 -- 1680-7324 https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1393-2019 https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00003292 https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00003250/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/19/1393/2019/acp-19-1393-2019.pdf |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ uneingeschränkt info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1393-2019 |
container_title |
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics |
container_volume |
19 |
container_issue |
2 |
container_start_page |
1393 |
op_container_end_page |
1411 |
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1766011966412816384 |