Ground/space, passive/active remote sensing observations coupled with particle dispersion modelling to understand the inter-continental transport of wildfire smoke plumes

TL;DR

This study combines satellite, ground lidar, and particle dispersion models to analyze intercontinental wildfire smoke transport from North America to Europe during 2017, revealing detailed aerosol properties and vertical distribution.

Contribution

It integrates multiple remote sensing observations with dispersion modeling to improve understanding of wildfire smoke intercontinental transport and aerosol characteristics.

Findings

Smoke reached Iberian Peninsula a few days after North American fires.

Smoke particles were observed in the stratosphere and troposphere during transport.

Particle properties varied with altitude and time, indicating different sedimentation and transport processes.

Abstract

During the 2017 record-breaking burning season in Canada / United States, intense wild fires raged during the first week of September in the Pacific northwestern region (British Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and northern California) burning mostly temperate coniferous forests. The heavy loads of smoke particles emitted in the atmosphere reached the Iberian Peninsula (IP) a few days later on 7 and 8 September. Satellite imagery allows to identify two main smoke clouds emitted during two different periods that were injected and transported in the atmosphere at several altitude levels. Columnar properties on 7 and 8 September at two Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) mid-altitude, background sites in northern and southern Spain are: aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 440 nm up to 0.62, Angstrom exponent of 1.6-1.7, large dominance of small particles (fine mode fraction > 0.88), low absorption AOD at 440 nm (<0.008) and large single scattering albedo at 440 nm (>0.98). Profiles from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) show the presence of smoke particles in the stratosphere during the transport, whereas the smoke is only observed in the troposphere at its arrival over the IP. Portuguese and Spanish ground lidar stations from the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network / Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research InfraStructure Network (EARLINET/ACTRIS) and the Micro-Pulse Lidar NETwork (MPLNET) reveal smoke plumes with different properties: particle depolarization ratio and color ratio, respectively, of 0.05 and 2.5 in the mid troposphere (5-9 km) and of 0.10 and 3.0 in the upper troposphere (10-13 km). In the mid troposphere the particle depolarization ratio does not seem time-dependent during the transport whereas the color ratio seems to increase (larger particles sediment first).