Quantitative studies of wildfire smoke injection heights with the Terra Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) is in its ninth year of operation aboard NASA's Terra satellite. MISR acquires imagery at nine view angles between 70.5° forward and backward of nadir. Stereoscopic image matching of red band data at 275-m horizontal spatial resolution provides measurements of aerosol plume heights in the vicinity and downwind of wildfires. We are supplementing MISR's standard stereo product with more detailed, higher vertical spatial resolution stereo retrievals over individual smoke plumes, using the MISR INteractive eXplorer (MINX) analysis tool. To limit the amount of data that must be processed, MODIS (Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) thermal anomaly data are used to identify fire locations. Data over North America are being analyzed to generate a climatology of smoke injection heights and to derive a general parameterization for the injection heights that can be used within non-plume-resolving chemical transport models. In 2002, we find that up to about 30% of fire plumes over North America reached the free troposphere. Sufficiently buoyant plumes tend to become trapped near stratified stable layers within the atmospheric vertical profile, supporting a result first obtained on a more limited set of MISR data [1]. Data from other years are being processed to further establish the robustness of these conclusions.

[1]  Bernard Pinty,et al.  Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument description and experiment overview , 1998, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[2]  Lorraine A. Remer,et al.  ARM Southern Great Plains Site Observations of the Smoke Pall Associated with the 1998 Central American Fires , 2000 .

[3]  J. Goldammer,et al.  Modeling of carbonaceous particles emitted by boreal and temperate wildfires at northern latitudes , 2000 .

[4]  R. Davies,et al.  Simultaneous retrieval of cloud motion and height from polar‐orbiter multiangle measurements , 2001 .

[5]  Kathy Jones,et al.  Impact of the 1998 Central American fires on PM2.5 mass and composition in the southeastern United States , 2001 .

[6]  Jia Zong,et al.  MISR in-flight camera geometric model calibration and georectification performance , 2002, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[7]  V. Rao Kotamarthi,et al.  Field observations of regional and urban impacts on NO2, ozone, UVB, and nitrate radical production rates in the Phoenix air basin , 2002 .

[8]  Susan Paradise,et al.  MISR stereoscopic image matchers: techniques and results , 2002, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[9]  J. Muller,et al.  Photogrammetric retrieval of cloud advection and top height from the multi-angle imaging spectroradiometer (MISR) , 2002 .

[10]  Jan-Peter Muller,et al.  Operational retrieval of cloud-top heights using MISR data , 2002, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[11]  Teruyuki Nakajima,et al.  Tropospheric aerosol optical thickness from the GOCART model and comparisons with satellite and sun photometer measurements , 2002 .

[12]  Michael Fromm,et al.  Transport of forest fire smoke above the tropopause by supercell convection , 2003 .

[13]  L. Jaeglé,et al.  PHOBEA/ITCT 2002 Airborne Observations of trans-Pacific Transport of Ozone, CO, VOCs, and Aerosols to the Northeast Pacific: Impacts of Asian Anthropogenic and Siberian Boreal Fire Emissions. , 2003 .

[14]  Heather Price,et al.  PHOBEA/ITCT 2002 airborne observations of transpacific transport of ozone, CO, volatile organic compounds, and aerosols to the northeast Pacific: Impacts of Asian anthropogenic and Siberian boreal fire emissions , 2004 .

[15]  A. Ansmann,et al.  Closure study on optical and microphysical properties of a mixed urban and Arctic haze air mass observed with Raman lidar and Sun photometer , 2004 .

[16]  T. Brown,et al.  The Impact of Twenty-First Century Climate Change on Wildland Fire Danger in the Western United States: An Applications Perspective , 2004 .

[17]  Jan-Peter Muller,et al.  Assessment of MISR and MODIS cloud top heights through inter‐comparison with a back‐scattering lidar at SIRTA , 2004 .

[18]  Mark R. Schoeberl,et al.  Transport of smoke from Canadian forest fires to the surface near Washington, D.C.: Injection height, entrainment, and optical properties , 2004 .

[19]  S. Frolking,et al.  A major regional air pollution event in the northeastern United States caused by extensive forest fires in Quebec, Canada , 2004 .

[20]  Jan-Peter Muller,et al.  Intercomparison of multiple years of MODIS, MISR and radar cloud-top heights , 2005 .

[21]  T. Swetnam,et al.  Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity , 2006, Science.

[22]  David J. Diner,et al.  Multiscale Plume Transport from the Collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 , 2006 .

[23]  David J. Diner,et al.  Aerosol source plume physical characteristics from space-based multiangle imaging , 2007 .

[24]  David J. Diner,et al.  A data-mining approach to associating MISR smoke plume heights with MODIS fire measurements , 2007 .

[25]  F. Bréon,et al.  Injection height of biomass burning aerosols as seen from a spaceborne lidar , 2007 .

[26]  D. Winker,et al.  Initial performance assessment of CALIOP , 2007 .

[27]  David G. Streets,et al.  Impacts of enhanced biomass burning in the boreal forests in 1998 on tropospheric chemistry and the sensitivity of model results to the injection height of emissions , 2007 .

[28]  Thomas P. Ackerman,et al.  An assessment of Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) stereo‐derived cloud top heights and cloud top winds using ground‐based radar, lidar, and microwave radiometers , 2007 .

[29]  David J. Diner,et al.  Wildfire smoke injection heights: Two perspectives from space , 2008 .

[30]  David J. Diner,et al.  Stratospheric impact of the Chisholm pyrocumulonimbus eruption: 1. Earth-viewing satellite perspective , 2008 .

[31]  Yang Chen,et al.  Example applications of the MISR INteractive eXplorer (MINX) software tool to wildfire smoke plume analyses , 2008, Optical Engineering + Applications.