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The integration of observations and models can improve air quality forecasts (in particular ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM)) for extreme events (e.g., wildfires). We present our work on the Canadian wildfire event on 6–12 June 2015 that impacted the air quality in the Mid-Atlantic region in the U.S. We use the Weather Research and Forecastin...
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... local impacts of the Canadian wildfire are demonstrated using observations from the ground-based in-situ and remotely sensed instruments mentioned below. The site locations are shown in Fig. 3 which also shows the terrain height in the gray contour. The data availability in each site is shown in Table 3. The dot color of each site in Fig. 3 shows the available observations as listed in Table 3. The Beltsville site is the super observation site which has all the instruments used in this study, e. g., 915 MHz radar wind ...
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... local impacts of the Canadian wildfire are demonstrated using observations from the ground-based in-situ and remotely sensed instruments mentioned below. The site locations are shown in Fig. 3 which also shows the terrain height in the gray contour. The data availability in each site is shown in Table 3. The dot color of each site in Fig. 3 shows the available observations as listed in Table 3. The Beltsville site is the super observation site which has all the instruments used in this study, e. g., 915 MHz radar wind profiler, AirNow O 3 , ceilometer, TROPOZ DIAL ozone lidar, and ...
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... km at Horn Point. The Piney Run station is located in the rural area over a mountain range in the Appalachian Mountains. The HUBC station is located in the suburban area between Baltimore and Washington D.C., and the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. While the Horn Point station is in the coastal area at the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay (Fig. ...
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Citations
... As both these components are emitted through biomass burning, O 3 levels are also expected to be influenced by wildfires (e.g. Jaffe and Wigder 2012;Schneider and Abbatt 2022;Yang et al. 2022) and was therefore also analysed. The European Ambient Air Quality Directive (2008/50/EC) sets limit or target values (LVs or TVs) for several air pollutants above which considerable health impacts are expected. ...
Background: Air quality deteriorates significantly during wildfire events, which poses a risk for the health of affected human populations. The Mediterranean Basin was strongly impacted by wildfires during the 2021 fire season, particularly in Greece.
Aims: This work aims at estimating the impact of the Greek wildfires of August 2021 on the air quality in Athens.
Methods: The numerical modelling system WRF-APIFLAME-CHIMERE, which comprises a meteorological model, a smoke emissions model and a chemical transport model, was employed in estimating the hourly three-dimensional distribution of particulate matter (PM), CO and O3 concentrations during the wildfires. The performance of the modelling system was evaluated by comparing modelled results with air quality observations and atmospheric optical depth measurements.
Key results: Good agreement between measured data and model results was found, with results obtained with a higher-resolution computational grid performing the best.
Conclusions: The calculated values indicate concerning hourly and daily levels of air pollution, above the limit values for human health protection, during the analysed days within and around Athens.
Implications: The results highlight the importance of implementing a strategy for human health protection during wildfire events affecting populated areas. This modelling approach could be a basis for a smoke forecasting system.
Coastal areas are some of the most densely populated and economically important regions in the world. As such, protecting the health of the human population and ecosystems at the coastal interface and understanding the impacts of environmental stressors such as air pollutants provides wide‐ranging benefits. Air quality (AQ) processes within coastal regions have been studied using ground and space‐based platforms, with intensive field campaigns focused on addressing key science questions that are typically partitioned into either direct atmospheric effects (e.g., anthropogenic emissions creating air pollution) or indirect processes and feedback loops (e.g., terrestrial/marine biogenic processes modifying atmospheric properties). The atmospheric planetary boundary layer (PBL) and its depth (or height) connect land, air, and the water surface via many pathways, especially with transport and exchange processes tied to the complexities of the coastal interface. We still cannot accurately characterize—through field, aircraft, or space‐based observations—the spatial and temporal PBL variability and processes within the PBL that couple together coastal dynamics and air quality. Several upcoming geostationary and polar‐orbiting satellite missions are likely to make significant progress in characterizing these air/land/water interactions over the next decade. Here, we present a framework of the current understanding of the PBL's role in coastal regions, primarily regarding air quality and atmospheric deposition, to motivate future concerted efforts from ground‐ and space‐based platforms to achieve a holistic understanding of the coastal interface.
The wildfire season in the Western United States (U.S.) was anomalously large in 2020, with a majority of burned area due to lightning ignitions resulting in overall fire emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) in the Western region almost 3 times the 2001–2019 average. We used the Community Atmosphere Model version 6 with Chemistry (CAM-chem) to investigate how the 2020 fires in the Western U.S. affected air quality locally as well as in surrounding regions that received transported pollution. Simulations with and without fire emissions over the Western U.S. (32.5–49°N, 115–125°W) in July–December 2020 were used to determine average changes in atmospheric composition across the country. Comparisons against satellite and ground-based column CO observations show that the model generally underestimated CO from fires but adequately reproduced spatial and temporal variability. Simulations showed the 2020 fire season contributed 14.5% to atmospheric CO over the Contiguous United States in September, and ∼3% to CO averaged across the Northern Hemisphere; these enhancements lasted several months. Fire emissions in 2020 continued later into the year than usual, resulting in sustained air pollution over the Western U.S. region, with noticeable meridional transport of ozone (O3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Finally, we use the model to identify two transported fire events at Boulder, Colorado.
