QUANTIFYING BOREAL FIRE & POLLUTION ENHANCEMENT OF THE FREE TROPOSPHERIC OZONE COLUMN DURING THE 2008 ARC-IONS CAMPAIGN

Alaina Luzik, Stephan Gallagher, & Anne ThompsonPenn State University, Dept of Meteorology

OUTLINE Introduction to the Laminar Identification (LID)

Method Motivation Fire Regions Method for Fire Assessment Results Conclusion Future Work

INTRODUCTION TO THE LID METHOD

Correlation between the normalized ozone profile and potential temperature is plotted up to the tropopause

Strong Correlation > 0.7 is Gravity Wave (green)

Weak Correlation (between -0.3 and 0.3) is Rossby Wave (yellow)

LID METHOD

Gravity Wave is classified as the Regional Convention and Lightning (RCL) term

Rossby Wave is classified as either Stratospheric (STRAT) influence or Other

“Other” ozone is the unclassified left-overs Any ozone below 1-2 km (varies at each site)

is classified as Boundary Layer (BL) ozone. BL ozone is ignored for this study

MOTIVATION

~50 % of the average TTOC is classified as “Other” How much ozone is due to fires/pollution?

Fire Regions 6 major fire/pollution sources:

Siberian Fires Asian Pollution/California Fires Western Canadian Fires Midwestern U.S. Fires Southeastern U.S. Fires Eastern Canadian Fires

Siberian Fires

Asian Pollution

Western Canadian Fires Eastern

Canadian Fires

California Fires

Midwestern U.S. Fires

Southeastern U.S. Fires

DETERMINING LAYERS USING NOAA HYSPLIT

•HYSPLIT back trajectories were used to determine low, middle, and upper layers based strictly on directional changes over the past 6 days

•Overall, the 3 layers were fairly consistent at each location (across the campaign)

•Example from Boulder, CO (July 3, 2008, levels: red: 4 km, blue: 9 km, green: 12 km) of 3 layers as each direction of back trajectories are substantially different

•Ozone, Temperature, and RH profile from July 3, 2008, in Boulder, CO, displaying the 3 layers

Upper

Middle

Low

HYSPLIT: Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (http://www.ready.noaa.gov/ready/open/hysplit4.html)

BL

OZONE LEVELS IN EACH LAYER

Layer BL RCL Strat Other Total

Low 3.54 0 3.55 6.27 13.36

Middle 0 0 8.26 5.22 13.48

Upper 0 0 2.64 15.5 18.14

•After determining the 3 distinct layers, we computed the ozone levels within each layer using the budgeter program

•The LID method is still applied as well to break them into categories

•Level and budget breakdown of 3 layers and 4 categories of ozone (DU) from July 3, 2008, in Boulder, CO

FIRE ASSESSMENT•Use HYSPLIT back trajectories and FIRMS fire maps to determine fire influence in each layer

•Boulder, CO: July 3, 2008

•Low (red): no fire influence

•Middle/Upper (blue/green): fire influence from California (between San Francisco and Los Angeles)

COMPARISONS TO AVERAGES

Level RCL RCL Avg % Inc Strat Strat Avg % Inc Other Other Avg % Inc Source

Middle 0 0.81 0% 8.26 5.54 49% 5.22 5.58 0%

Asian Pollution/CA

Fires

Upper 0 0.67 0% 2.64 4.96 0% 15.5 8.15 90%

Asian Pollution/CA

Fires

•Daily fire influence was determined by comparing that day's ozone amount in each category to the respective average ozone within each layer on all fire days

•Boulder, CO: July 3, 2008

•Middle: STRAT ozone: 49% increase due to fires

•Upper: Other ozone: 90% increase due to fires

•All other categories on this day did not increase due to fires on this day (based on the average)

ENHANCEMENT PERCENTAGES•Averages of each percent increase were determined across all 6 fire/pollution sources (rather than each layer)

•Using those percentages, the amount of ozone attributed to fires/pollution was determined and applied to the original budgets

Average Tropospheric Ozone Distribution in Boulder, CO: June-July 2008

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Initial Budget Final Budget

Locations

Ozo

ne

(D

U)

Fires/Pollution

Other

STRAT

RCL

BL

0.16 DU

9.5 DU

0.24

DU

9.9 DU

METHODS SUMMARY1. Collect Data:

ground launches of ozonesondes &

radiosondes

2. Compute LID Budgets:break ozone into BL,

RCL, STRAT, & Other categories

3. Determine Layers:use of HYSPLIT back

trajectories to find low,middle, & upper layers

6. Comparisons:amount of ozone on

fire days compared to avg within each layer

5. Fire Assessment:use back trajectories& FIRMS fire maps to determine fire effect

4. Ozone in Layers:compute ozone levels& 4 categories within

each layer

7. Source Contribution:% of Asian pollution/CA,Siberian, Canadian, & SE US fires assessed

8. Enhancements:% increase due to firesused to re-categorize

& modify budgets

9. Final Budget:Break ozone into BL,RCL, STRAT, Fires/Pollution, & Other

LOCATION VARIABILITY OF FIRE & POLLUTION INFLUENCE

•Representation of the relative percentage of fire/pollution influence between locations (by all 5 sources) in all layers, for each day (roughly 15 days of data)

Fire/Pollution Source Contribution via Back Trajectory Passes over all Locations

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

20%

Locations

Perc

en

tag

e

Siberian FiresAsian Pollution/CA FiresWestern Canadian FiresMidwest US FiresSE US FiresEastern Canadian Fires

FINAL BUDGET WITH FIRES & POLLUTION

•Redistribution of ozone budgets account for ozone enhancement in the RCL, STRAT and Other terms

Average Tropospheric Ozone Distribution Over all Locations: June-July 2008

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Whit

ehor

se, Y

K

Kelowna

, BC

Yellow

knife

, NT

Stony

Plai

n, A

B

Bratt's

Lak

e, S

K

Boulde

r, CO

Egber

t, ON

Yarm

outh

, NS

Goose

Bay

, NF

Sable

Islan

d, N

S

Locations

Ozo

ne

(DU

)

Other

Fires/Pollution

Strat

RCL

BL

RESULTS

Fire and Pollution Effects on Ozone

BL Ozone Enhancement 0%

RCL Ozone Enhancement 11%

STRAT Ozone Enhancement 58%

Other Ozone Enhancement 29%

Average Ozone Enhancement

22%

•Fire/Pollution contribution: 22% and 9.1 DU increase in TTOC

•Ozone enhancement percentages:

•Large enhancement by STRAT was not expected and may indicate an error in the LID methodology

CONCLUSION

Forest Fires from Siberia as well as North America influenced ozone column amounts at all ARC-IONS sites

Average Enhancement of 9.1 DU (22%) of the TTOC

Improvements to the LID method are necessary to correctly classify STRAT ozone

FUTURE WORK

Expand this study to include the IONS-04 and IONS-06 data for sites that were used in all 3 campaigns

Further distinguish between ozone sources classified as “Other”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ARC-IONS sponsored by NASA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOAA’s HYSPLIT: Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (http://www.ready.noaa.gov/ready/open/hysplit4.html)

Unversity of Maryland FIRMS Web Fire Mapper (http://firefly.geog.umd.edu/firemap/)