Impact of Fire Emissions on U.S. Air Quality from 1997 to 2016–A Modeling Study in the Satellite Era
1
Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD 21046, USA
2
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
3
Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
4
Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, USA
5
NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, College Park, MD 20740, USA
6
Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(6), 913; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12060913
Received: 7 January 2020
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Revised: 3 March 2020
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Accepted: 5 March 2020
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Published: 12 March 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Biomass Burning)
A regional modeling system that integrates the state-of-the-art emissions processing (SMOKE), climate (CWRF), and air quality (CMAQ) models has been combined with satellite measurements of fire activities to assess the impact of fire emissions on the contiguous United States (CONUS) air quality during 1997–2016. The system realistically reproduced the spatiotemporal distributions of the observed meteorology and surface air quality, with a slight overestimate of surface ozone (O3) by ~4% and underestimate of surface PM2.5 by ~10%. The system simulation showed that the fire impacts on primary pollutants such as CO were generally confined to the fire source areas but its effects on secondary pollutants like O3 spread more broadly. The fire contribution to air quality varied greatly during 1997-2016 and occasionally accounted for more than 100 ppbv of monthly mean surface CO and over 20 µg m−3 of monthly mean PM2.5 in the Northwest U.S. and Northern California, two regions susceptible to frequent fires. Fire emissions also had implications on air quality compliance. From 1997 to 2016, fire emissions increased surface 8-hour O3 standard exceedances by 10% and 24-hour PM2.5 exceedances by 33% over CONUS.
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Keywords:
Satellite remote sensing; fire emissions; SMOKE-CWRF-CMAQ; Air Quality
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MDPI and ACS Style
Tao, Z.; He, H.; Sun, C.; Tong, D.; Liang, X.-Z. Impact of Fire Emissions on U.S. Air Quality from 1997 to 2016–A Modeling Study in the Satellite Era. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 913. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12060913
AMA Style
Tao Z, He H, Sun C, Tong D, Liang X-Z. Impact of Fire Emissions on U.S. Air Quality from 1997 to 2016–A Modeling Study in the Satellite Era. Remote Sensing. 2020; 12(6):913. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12060913
Chicago/Turabian StyleTao, Zhining, Hao He, Chao Sun, Daniel Tong, and Xin-Zhong Liang. 2020. "Impact of Fire Emissions on U.S. Air Quality from 1997 to 2016–A Modeling Study in the Satellite Era" Remote Sensing 12, no. 6: 913. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12060913
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