Airborne Emission Rate Measurements Validate Remote Sensing Observations and Emission Inventories of Western U.S. Wildfires

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c07121
• Publication Date: 2022-05-17T13:59:46Z
• Authors: Chelsea E. Stockwell; Megan M. Bela; Matthew M. Coggon; Georgios I. Gkatz...; Elizabeth Wiggins; Emily M. Gargulinski; Taylor Shingler; Marta Fenn; Debora Griffin; Christopher D. Ho...; Xinxin Ye; Pablo E. Saide; Ilann Bourgeois; Jeff Peischl; Caroline C. Womack; Rebecca A. Washen...; Patrick R. Veres; J. Andrew Neuman; Jessica B. Gilman; Aaron Lamplugh; Rebecca H. Schwantes; Stuart A. McKeen; Armin Wisthaler; Felix Piel; Hongyu Guo; Pedro Campuzano-Jost; Jose L. Jimenez; Alan Fried; Thomas F. Hanisco; Lewis Gregory Huey; Anne Perring; Joseph M. Katich; Glenn S. Diskin; John B. Nowak; T. Paul Bui; Hannah S. Halliday; Joshua P. DiGangi; Gabriel Pereira; Eric P. James; Ravan Ahmadov; Chris A. McLinden; Amber J. Soja; Richard H. Moore; Johnathan W. Hair; Carsten Warneke
• Keywords: Emission inventory

Carbonaceous emissions from wildfires are a dynamic mixture of gases and particles that have important impacts on air quality climate. Emissions feed atmospheric models estimated using burned area fire radiative power (FRP) methods rely satellite products. These approaches show wide variability large uncertainties, their accuracy is challenging to evaluate due limited aircraft ground measurements. Here, we present novel method estimate plume-integrated total carbon speciated emission rates unique combination lidar remote sensing aerosol extinction profiles in situ measured constituents. We strong agreement between these aircraft-derived detailed area-based inventory distributes time Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite FRP observations (Fuel2Fire inventory, slope = 1.33 ± 0.04, r2 0.93, RMSE 0.27). Other more commonly used inventories strongly correlate with but wide-ranging over- under-predictions. A correlation found monoxide those derived the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) for five coincident sampling windows (slope 0.99 0.18; bias 28.5%). Smoke coefficients (g MJ–1) enable direct estimations primary gas observations, derive values many compounds emitted by temperate forest fuels, including several previously unreported species.