Around the world in 17 days - hemispheric-scale transport of forest fire smoke from Russia in May 2003

[摘要] In May 2003, severe forest fires in southeast Russia resulted in smokeplumes extending widely across the Northern Hemisphere. This study combinessatellite data from a variety of platforms (Moderate Resolution ImagingSpectroradiometer (MODIS), Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS),Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and Global OzoneMonitoring Experiment (GOME)) and vertical aerosol profiles derived withRaman lidar measurements with results from a Lagrangian particle dispersionmodel to understand the transport processes that led to the large hazeplumes observed over North America and Europe. The satellite images provideda unique opportunity for validating model simulations of tropospherictransport on a truly hemispheric scale. Transport of the smoke occurred intwo directions: Smoke travelling northwestwards towards Scandinavia waslifted over the Urals and arrived over the Norwegian Sea. Smoke travellingeastwards to the Okhotsk Sea was also lifted, it then crossed the Bering Seato Alaska from where it proceeded to Canada and was later even observed overScandinavia and Eastern Europe on its way back to Russia. Not many events ofthis kind, if any, have been observed, documented and simulated with atransport model comprehensively. The total transport time was about 17 days.We compared transport model simulations using meteorological analysis datafrom both the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) andthe National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in order to find outhow well this event could be simulated using these two datasets. Althoughdifferences between the two simulations are found on small scales, bothagree remarkably well with each other and with the observations on largescales. On the basis of the available observations, it cannot be decidedwhich simulation was more realistic.

[学科分类] 大气科学