Impact of Forest Fire Emissions on Regional Air Quality

1
Impact of Forest Fire Emissions on Regional Air
Quality

• Application of satellite-detected fire
  information
• to the regional air quality study

Hyun Cheol Kim, Daewon W. Byun, Heejin In and
Soontae Kim University of Houston The Institute
for Multi-dimensional Air Quality Studies (IMAQS)
2
Introduction
OBJECTIVES To expand existing knowledge of
fire-atmosphere interaction To enhance the
ability to predict and respond to the dangers of
wild fire, and to help decision-making for the
prescribed fire PROGRESSES UH-IMAQS has
developed CMAQ/BlueSky linkage tool to apply
BlueSky fire emissions into CMAQ.
CMAQ/BlueSky shows impacts of fire emission on
the regional air quality, but is not
convenient for a daily Air Quality Forecasting
(AQF) system. NOAA NESDIS is providing daily
analysis of fire locations from satellite
observations. A CMAQ/HMS linkage tool to handle
wildland forest fire detected by satellites
can be useful to provide near real-time wildfire
information in the AQF system.
3
UH-IMAQS AQF framework
4
UH-IMAQS AQF framework
MM5 (4pm)
MCIP (8pm)
IDL (12pm)
CMAQ (9pm)
SMOKE (8pm)
5
UH-IMAQS AQF framework
MM5 (4pm)
MCIP (8pm)
IDL (12pm)
CMAQ (9pm)
CMAQ/BlueSky linkage CMAQ/HMS linkage
SMOKE (8pm)
6
Forest Fire Emissions

• Emissions from forest fire should be considered
  for regional air quality study
• BlueSky provides emissions for prescribed/wild
  land forest fires
• Emissions from BlueSky NEI99 are used for study

7
Impact of fire emissions (ozone)
Ozone
? without fire emissions
Enhanced ozone due to fire emissions
? with fire emissions
8
Impact of fire emissions (PM2.5)
PM2.5
without fire emissions
with fire emissions
Limitation of BlueSky emissions In order to
establish an automated air qualify forecasting
(AQF) system, more conventional (at least
daily-based) fire information is needed ? Use
satellite-detected fire location and time
9
Satellite measured fire locations

• From NESDIS Hazard Mapping System (HMS)

10
Satellite measured fire locations (Louisiana
region)
Rita
Katrina
11
NESDIS Hazard Mapping System (HMS)
Wildfire information analyzed from GOES, AVHRR,
MODIS, and DMSP/OLS NESDIS HMS provides near
real-time fire detections (updates several
times a day )
Rita
Katrina
http//www.firedetect.noaa.gov
hms.20060620.prelim.txt
12
Satellite measured fire locations (HMS)
Rita
Katrina
13
Fire emissions estimation

• Emissioni A?B?CE?ei
• where A is the area burned, B is
  the fuel loading, CE is the combustion
  efficiency, and ei is an emission factor for
  species i (Wiedinmeyer et al., 2006)

Global land cover dataset 2000 (from SPOT4)
Fuel characteristic classification system (FCCS)
14
Fire emissions estimation

• Fire location/time information
• Fire emission calculation
• (CO, CO2, PM10, PM25, NOx, NH3, SO2, VOC)
• Source classification
• (ALD2, ETH, NR, OLE, PAR, CO, NO, NO2, NH3,
  SO2, PEC, PMFINE, PNO3, POA)
• Merging into SMOKE emission output
• Run CMAQ

• ? From NESDIS HMS
• ? Using GLC/ FCCS
• (Wiedinmeyer et al., 2006)
• ? Using SCC
• ? ASSUMPTION well mixed within PBL

15
Example of imputed forest fire emission

• Example of emission inventory by SMOKE at
  -90.123352E, 33.140159N (CMAQ grid 76,66) on Jun.
  14, 2006
• Next days emission was assumed as 50 of
  previous day emission (If no fire is detected)
• Emissions are re-allocated vertically within PBL

Added CO by fire emission
Original CO emission
16
Impact of forest fire emission (PM2.5)

• Initialization Two day simulation without fire
  emissions then restart third day with fire
  emissions
• Starting time 1900 CST

• Without forest fire emission

• With forest fire emission

17
Impact of fire emissions (PM2.5)

• Difference between cases with/without fire
  emission

18
Impact of fire emissions (Ozone)

• Initialization Two day simulation without fire
  emissions then restart third day with fire
  emissions
• Starting time 1900 CST (nighttime no
  photochemistry, small difference due to NO
  emissions from fire) daytime fire emissions
  seem to affect O3 production in the urban plumes
  as well

• Without forest fire emission

• With forest fire emission

19
Impact of fire emissions (Ozone)

• Difference between cases with/without fire
  emission

20
Conclusion and future work

• UH-IMAQS has developed a CMAQ/HMS linkage to
  apply satellite-detected forest fire emission
  into regional air quality studies using CMAQ
• CAMQ/HMS provides near real-time wildfire
  information for Air Quality Forecasting (AQF)
  system
• CMAQ simulation results show that adding forest
  fire affects regional air quality. PM2.5 is much
  enhanced, and O3 shows some decrease at nighttime
  (NO in urban area) and increase during daytime.
• Future Works
• Results should be evaluated with observations
• Method to allocate fire emission (horizontal,
  vertical and temporal) should be improved

21
(No Transcript)
22
HMS fire locations
23
HMS fire locations