HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 1

Wildfire, aka Biomass Burning (BB), and Emissions

Johannes Kaiser,

Martin Schultz, Christiane Textor, Mikhail Sofiev, Tony Hollingsworth, Jean-Marie Gregoire

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 2

FIRE EMISSIONS: OUTLINE

SignificanceHALO ActivitiesRequirementsObservation SystemGFAS Proposal Correlations StudySummary

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 3

SIGNIFICANCE for Atmosphere Monitoring: BB

AIR QUALITY: … can dominate regional air quality in “severe air pollution” events … can elevate background of atmospheric pollutant after long range

transport [Stohl et al. 2001, Forster et al. 2001, Andreae et al. 2001]

POLLUTION CONTROL: … significantly contributes to global budgets of several gases

Kyoto, CLRTAP, …

WEATHER: (absorbing aerosols) … influences the radiative energy budget [Konzelmann et al., JGR 1996] … provides cloud condensation nuclei [Andreae et al., Science 2004] Heat release accelerates deep convection. [Damoah et al., ACP 2006]

REMOTE SENSING: … affects essential a priori information for remote sensing (AOD, profiles)

CHALLENGE: … are highly variable on all time scales from hours to decades

NOAA, 2005-12-11

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 4

Interannual Variability

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 5

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 6

SIGNIFICANCE for Land Monitoring

Wildfires represent a significant sink for the terrestrial carbon pools.

Wildfire behaviour characterises land cover types with repeated fire events.

typical fire repeat periodtypical fire intensitytypical fire seasonality…

Wildfires can change the land cover type reversiblytropical deforestation…

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 7

HALO ACTIVITIES

1. compilation of EO fire product requirements for environmental monitoring

2. comparison to available products3. development of a future strategy4. quantitative refinement of requirements and strategy

HALO Documents: “Emissions for GEMS”, HALO report

“Global Assimilation of Wildfire Emissions for GEMS”, HALO report

“Observation Requirements for Global Biomass Burning Emission

Monitoring”, Proceedings of the 2006 EUMETSAT Meteorological

Satellite Conference

“Expression of Interest for Listing of a European Project on a Global

Fire Assimilation System”, communicated to GAC

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 8

REQUIREMENTS: Monitoring Objectives

Selected GEMS Deliverables:global operational system for monitoring & forecasting

atmospheric compositionglobal retrospective analyses 2000-2007several regional air-quality forecasting systems

Selected GEOLAND Objectives:to model vegetation as part of the global carbon cycle

quantitativelyto characterise behaviour of land cover types with

repeated fire eventsto monitor land cover change

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 9

ATMOS. MONITOR.: BB Observation Requirements

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 10

Two types of fire products accessible from Earth obs. systems

Area burnt

- Burnt area- Burnt pixel- Burnt scar

BURNT AREA product

Fire front- Active fire- Hot spot- Fire pixel- Fire count

ACTIVE FIRE product

OBSERVATIONSYSTEM

• thermal emission, MIR• only during fire

• spectrally flat• BRDF flat• dark• only after fire

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 11

traditional:

Fire Radiative Power (FRP): M(…) = FRP * time * scaling factor * emission factor(…)

M (…) = Area . Biomass . Burning efficiency. Emission factor

Globe: ~ 400 millions hectares burnt in 2000Med. Basin: ~ 500000 hectares

Dry tropical grass savanna: ~ 2 tons/hectareMoist tropical savanna: ~ 10 tons/hectareBoreal forest: ~ 20 tons/hectareMoist tropical forest: ~ 40 tons/hectare

~ 25% forest -- ~ 80% savannaWoodland & forests~ 1600 g CO2 / kg biomassGrasslands~ 1700 g CO2 / kg biomass

Fuel: T. ha-1 ????

“pixels” burnt per vegetation type

Area burnt per vegetation type: ha

OBSERVATION SYSTEM:Calculating Emission Amounts

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OBSERVATION SYSTEM: Current Fire Products

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OBSERVATION SYSTEM: Some Conclusions

No current product satisfies all requirements.

The required information is being observed but not being made available in products.

LEO spatial coverage/resolution complements GEO temporal resolution.

Hot spots (tropical forest) complement burnt area Many existing products are inconsistent. [Boschetti et al. 2004]

Several new operational products are anticipated.

• Fire Radiative Power from SEVIRI (M. Wooster)

• WF_ABBA from global GEO system (E. Prins)

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 14

PROPOSAL GFAS

A Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) is needed to combine several fire observations land cover products meteorological conditions a numerical model of fire activity.

Such a system can provide the required fire input for the GMES atmosphere and land monitoring systems.

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 15

PROPOSAL GFAS, cont. regionalised: e.g. events in mid-lats, statistics in tropics single, consistent processing for all GMES systems evolving with new scientific developments supported by 37 European scientists / institutions communicated to GEMS Advisory Commity

geoland, …

GEMS

satellitefire product

satelliteradiance

land coverclimatology

fireclimatology

land coverproduct

fireproduct

Global FireAssimilation

System

global fireemissions

greenhousegases

reactivegases

aerosols

regionalair quality

carbon

meteorology

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 16

CORRELATIONS STUDY: Goal

to quantify the correlation between the anticipated fire-related products of the GMES fast-track services for the land and atmosphere monitoring.

spatial correlation of changes in biomass and air pollution impact on absolute values and variability of atm. constituents constituents of primary interest: aerosols, CO2

[Icho

ku 2

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[Woo

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200

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CORRELATION STUDY: Approach

use fire emission inventory GFEDv2 as dummy for future GFAS. It combines [van der Werf et al., ACP 2006] MODIS hot spots CASA vegetation model.

1. obtain custom version of GFEDv2 with 8-day time resolution

2. conversions to GRIB format3. include fire emissions in IFS4. compare forecasts with / without fire emissions5. compare both to observed time series6. compare the difference to fuel load changes in CASA

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 18

SUMMARY

Fire, aka Biomass Burning (BB), emissions are needed globally in near-real time as well as in consistent multi-year time series.

No suitable BB emission product is available. Principal shortcomings are accuracy, delivery time, temporal resolution, geographical coverage.

Various fire observations complement each other.The development of a Global Fire Assimilation System

(GFAS) is needed to serve the GMES requirements.Product generation needs to exploit existing observations

more completely.FRP is very promising due to accuracy of emitted amount

calculation and temporal resolution.A quantitative study by HALO is on the way.

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MORE INFORMATION

www.ecmwf.int/research/EU_projects/HALOwww.ecmwf.int/research/EU_projects/GEMSwww.gmes-geoland.info j.kaiser@ecmwf.int

This work has been funded by the European Commission through the FP6 projects HALO, GEMS, and GEOLAND.

THANK YOU!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS