Forest fire plumes over the North Atlantic: p-TOMCAT model simulations with aircraft and satellite measurements from the ITOP/ICARTT campaign

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
• Main Authors: A. Cook, Peter, H. Savage, Nicholas, Turquety, Solène, D. Carver, Glenn, M. O'Connor, Fiona, Heckel, Andreas, Stewart, David, K. Whalley, Lisa, E. Parker, Alex, Schlager, Hans, B. Singh, Hanwant, A. Avery, Melody, W. Sachse, Glen, Brune, William, Richter, Andreas, P. Burrows, John, Purvis, Ruth, C. Lewis, Alastair, E. Reeves, Claire, S. Monks, Paul, G. Levine, James, A. Pyle, John
• Other Authors: Centre for Atmospheric Science Cambridge, UK, University of Cambridge UK (CAM), United Kingdom Met Office Exeter, Service d'aéronomie (SA), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institute of Environmental Physics Bremen (IUP), University of Bremen, School of Environmental Sciences Norwich, University of East Anglia Norwich (UEA), School of Chemistry Leeds, University of Leeds, Department of Chemistry Leicester, University of Leicester, DLR Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre = DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IPA), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Oberpfaffenhofen-Wessling (DLR), NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), NASA Langley Research Center Hampton (LaRC), PennState Meteorology Department, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), Penn State System-Penn State System, Facility of Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM), Department of Chemistry York, UK, University of York York, UK
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2007
• Subjects: long-range transport; forest fires; ozone; [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-AO-PH]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]; North Atlantic; Alaska
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00177134; https://hal.science/hal-00177134/document; https://hal.science/hal-00177134/file/Cook_et_al-2007-Journal_of_Geophysical_Research__Solid_Earth_%281978-2012%29.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1029/2006JD007563

Intercontinental Transport of Ozone and Precursors (ITOP) (part of International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation (ICARTT)) was an intense research effort to measure long-range transport of pollution across the North Atlantic and its impact on O3 production. During the aircraft campaign plumes were encountered containing large concentrations of CO plus other tracers and aerosols from forest fires in Alaska and Canada. A chemical transport model, p-TOMCAT, and new biomass burning emissions inventories are used to study the emissions long-range transport and their impact on the troposphere O3 budget. The fire plume structure is modeled well over long distances until it encounters convection over Europe. The CO values within the simulated plumes closely match aircraft measurements near North America and over the Atlantic and have good agreement with MOPITT CO data. O3 and NOx values were initially too great in the model plumes. However, by including additional vertical mixing of O3 above the fires, and using a lower NO2/CO emission ratio (0.008) for boreal fires, O3 concentrations are reduced closer to aircraft measurements, with NO2 closer to SCIAMACHY data. Too little PAN is produced within the simulated plumes, and our VOC scheme's simplicity may be another reason for O3 and NOx model-data discrepancies. In the p-TOMCAT simulations the fire emissions lead to increased tropospheric O3 over North America, the north Atlantic and western Europe from photochemical production and transport. The increased O3 over the Northern Hemisphere in the simulations reaches a peak in July 2004 in the range 2.0 to 6.2 Tg over a baseline of about 150 Tg.