On the use of ATSR fire count data to estimate the seasonal and interannual variability of vegetation fire emissions

[摘要] Biomass burning has long been recognised as an important source oftrace gases and aerosols in the atmosphere. The burning of vegetation has a repeating seasonal pattern, but the intensity of burning and theexact localisation of fires vary considerably from year to year. Recent studies have demonstratedthe high interannual variability of the emissions that are associated with biomassburning. In this paper I present a methodology using active fire counts from the Along-Track Scanning Radiometer(ATSR) sensor on board the ERS-2 satellite to estimate the seasonal and interannual variability of global biomass burningemissions in the time period 1996--2000. From the ATSR data, I compute relative scaling factors of burning intensity for each month, which are thenapplied to a standard inventory for carbon monoxide emissions from biomassburning. The new, time-resolved inventory is evaluated using the few existingmulti-year burned area observations on continental scales.

[学科分类] 大气科学