Widespread Biomass Burning Smoke Throughout the Remote Troposphere

Biomass burning emits ~34–41 Tg yr−1 of smoke aerosol to the atmosphere. Biomass burning aerosol directly influences the Earth’s climate by attenuation of solar and terrestrial radiation; however, its abundance and distribution on a global scale are poorly constrained, particularly after plumes dilu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature geoscience 2020-06, Vol.13 (6), p.422-427
Main Authors: Froyd, K D, Bian, H, Kupc, A, Williamson, C, Brock, C A, Ray, E, Hornbrook, R S, Hills, A J, Apel, E C, Chin, M, Colarco, P R, Murphy, D M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
704/106/35
704/106/35/823
704/106/35/824
704/106/694
Aerosol particles
Aerosols
Airborne sensing
Attenuation
Biomass
Biomass burning
Burning
Cloud precipitation
Dilution
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth System Sciences
Geochemistry
Geology
Geophysics/Geodesy
Geosciences (General)
Global aerosols
Ocean basins
Oceans
Plumes
Precipitation
Radiation
Removal
Smoke
Terrestrial radiation
Troposphere
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Summary:Biomass burning emits ~34–41 Tg yr−1 of smoke aerosol to the atmosphere. Biomass burning aerosol directly influences the Earth’s climate by attenuation of solar and terrestrial radiation; however, its abundance and distribution on a global scale are poorly constrained, particularly after plumes dilute into the background remote troposphere and are subject to removal by clouds and precipitation. Here we report global-scale, airborne measurements of biomass burning aerosol in the remote tropo-sphere. Measurements were taken during four series of seasonal flights over the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean basins, each with near pole-to-pole latitude coverage. We find that biomass burning particles in the remote troposphere are dilute but ubiquitous, accounting for one-quarter of the accumulation-mode aerosol number and one-fifth of the aerosol mass. Comparing our obser-vations with a high-resolution global aerosol model, we find that the model overestimates biomass burning aerosol mass in the remote troposphere with a mean bias of >400%, largely due to insufficient wet removal by in-cloud precipitation. After updat-ing the model’s aerosol removal scheme we find that, on a global scale, dilute smoke contributes as much as denser plumes to biomass burning’s scattering and absorption effects on the Earth’s radiation field.
ISSN:1752-0894
1752-0908
DOI:10.1038/s41561-020-0586-1