Accelerating Climate Action: A just transition in a post-Covid era. Book of abstracts, 9th SISC Annual Conference (online, 22-24 Set 2021)

• Main Authors: Filippo CALÌ QUAGLIA, Daniela Meloni, Alcide di Sarra, Tatiana Di Iorio, Virginia Ciardini, Giandomenico Pace, Giovanni Muscari, Silvia Becagli, Annalisa di Bernardino, Marco Cacciani, Ivan Ortega, James W. Hannigan
• Other Authors: CALÌ QUAGLIA, Filippo, Meloni, Daniela, Di Sarra, Alcide, Di Iorio, Tatiana, Ciardini, Virginia, Pace, Giandomenico, Muscari, Giovanni, Becagli, Silvia, di Bernardino, Annalisa, Cacciani, Marco, Ortega, Ivan, Hannigan, James W.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici 2021
• Subjects: Wildfire; radiative budget; arctic; biomass-burning; Settore FIS/06 - Fisica per il Sistema Terra e Il Mezzo Circumterrestre; Arctic; Canada; albedo; greenlandic
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/5033080

Extended and intense biomass burning fires occurred in Northern Canada and on the Greenlandic West coast during summer 2017. The smoke plume emitted into the atmosphere was transported and spread in the Arctic, producing one of the most significant impacts ever observed in the region. Evidence of Canadian and Greenlandic wildfires was recorded at the Thule High Arctic Atmospheric Observatory (THAAO, 76.5°N, 68.8°W, www.thuleatmos-it.it) by a suite of instruments managed by ENEA, INGV, Univ. of Florence, and NCAR. Chemical tracers such as CO, HCN, H2CO, C2H6, and NH3 were measured in the atmospheric column above Thule from 19 August to 23 August by an FTIR. The aerosol optical depth measured by the AERONET sunphotometer was dominated by the fine fraction, reaching a peak value of about 0.86 on 21 August. An air sampler monitored several wildfire compounds at a 48-hour resolution. Groundbased radiometers allowed the quantification of the surface radiation budget at THAAO. Backward trajectories produced through HYSPLIT simulations (Stein et al., 2015) were also employed to understand the atmospheric dynamics indicating the origin of the transported smoke. MODTRAN6.0 radiative transfer model (Berk et al., 2014) was used to estimate the aerosol radiative effect (ARE) and the heating rate profiles at 78° SZA. Measured temperature profiles, integrated water vapour, surface albedo, spectral AOD and aerosol extinction profiles from CALIOP onboard CALIPSO satellite were used as model input. The shortwave ARE at the surface was -43.7 W/m2 at 78° solar zenith angle (SZA) for AOD=0.626. The peak aerosol heating rate (+0.5 K/day) was reached within the aerosol layer between 8 and 12 km, while the maximum radiative effect (-45.4 W/m2) was found at 3 km, below the most extensive aerosol layer. The regional impact of the event observed between 15 and 25 August was investigated using MODTRAN to model the aerosol radiative effect efficiency (AREE) with measurements of AOD and surface albedo over land retrieved from MODIS. Instead, ...