HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 1 Wildfire, aka Biomass Burning (BB), and Emissions Johannes Kaiser, Martin Schultz, Christiane Textor, Mikhail Sofiev, Tony Hollingsworth, Jean-Marie Gregoire

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 2 FIRE EMISSIONS: OUTLINE Significance HALO Activities Requirements Observation System GFAS Proposal Correlations Study Summary

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 3 SIGNIFICANCE for Atmosphere Monitoring: BB AIR QUALITY: … can dominate regional air quality in severe air pollution events … can elevate background of atmospheric pollutant after long range transport [Stohl et al. 2001, Forster et al. 2001, Andreae et al. 2001] POLLUTION CONTROL: … significantly contributes to global budgets of several gases Kyoto, CLRTAP, … WEATHER: (absorbing aerosols) … influences the radiative energy budget [Konzelmann et al., JGR 1996] … provides cloud condensation nuclei [Andreae et al., Science 2004] Heat release accelerates deep convection. [Damoah et al., ACP 2006] REMOTE SENSING: … affects essential a priori information for remote sensing (AOD, profiles) CHALLENGE: … are highly variable on all time scales from hours to decades NOAA,

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 4 Interannual Variability

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 5

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 6 SIGNIFICANCE for Land Monitoring Wildfires represent a significant sink for the terrestrial carbon pools. Wildfire behaviour characterises land cover types with repeated fire events. typical fire repeat period typical fire intensity typical fire seasonality … Wildfires can change the land cover type reversibly tropical deforestation …

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 7 HALO ACTIVITIES 1. compilation of EO fire product requirements for environmental monitoring 2. comparison to available products 3. development of a future strategy 4. quantitative refinement of requirements and strategy HALO Documents: Emissions for GEMS, HALO report Global Assimilation of Wildfire Emissions for GEMS, HALO report Observation Requirements for Global Biomass Burning Emission Monitoring, Proceedings of the 2006 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference Expression of Interest for Listing of a European Project on a Global Fire Assimilation System, communicated to GAC

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 8 REQUIREMENTS: Monitoring Objectives Selected GEMS Deliverables: global operational system for monitoring & forecasting atmospheric composition global retrospective analyses several regional air-quality forecasting systems Selected GEOLAND Objectives: to model vegetation as part of the global carbon cycle quantitatively to characterise behaviour of land cover types with repeated fire events to monitor land cover change

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 9 ATMOS. MONITOR.: BB Observation Requirements

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 10 Two types of fire products accessible from Earth obs. systems Area burnt - Burnt area - Burnt pixel - Burnt scar BURNT AREA product Fire front - Active fire - Hot spot - Fire pixel - Fire count ACTIVE FIRE product OBSERVATION SYSTEM thermal emission, MIR only during fire spectrally flat BRDF flat dark only after fire

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 11 traditional: Fire Radiative Power (FRP): M(…) = FRP * time * scaling factor * emission factor(…) M (…) = Area. Biomass. Burning efficiency. Emission factor Globe: ~ 400 millions hectares burnt in 2000 Med. Basin: ~ hectares Dry tropical grass savanna: ~ 2 tons/hectare Moist tropical savanna: ~ 10 tons/hectare Boreal forest: ~ 20 tons/hectare Moist tropical forest: ~ 40 tons/hectare ~ 25% forest -- ~ 80% savanna Woodland & forests ~ 1600 g CO 2 / kg biomass Grasslands ~ 1700 g CO 2 / kg biomass Fuel: T. ha -1 ???? pixels burnt per vegetation type Area burnt per vegetation type: ha OBSERVATION SYSTEM: Calculating Emission Amounts

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 12 OBSERVATION SYSTEM: Current Fire Products

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 13 OBSERVATION SYSTEM: Some Conclusions No current product satisfies all requirements. The required information is being observed but not being made available in products. LEO spatial coverage/resolution complements GEO temporal resolution. Hot spots (tropical forest) complement burnt area Many existing products are inconsistent. [Boschetti et al. 2004] Several new operational products are anticipated. Fire Radiative Power from SEVIRI (M. Wooster) WF_ABBA from global GEO system (E. Prins)

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 14 PROPOSAL GFAS A Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) is needed to combine several fire observations land cover products meteorological conditions a numerical model of fire activity. Such a system can provide the required fire input for the GMES atmosphere and land monitoring systems.

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 15 PROPOSAL GFAS, cont. regionalised: e.g. events in mid-lats, statistics in tropics single, consistent processing for all GMES systems evolving with new scientific developments supported by 37 European scientists / institutions communicated to GEMS Advisory Commity geoland, … GEMS satellite fire product satellite radiance land cover climatology fire climatology land cover product fire product Global Fire Assimilation System global fire emissions greenhouse gases reactive gases aerosols regional air quality carbon meteorology

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 16 CORRELATIONS STUDY: Goal to quantify the correlation between the anticipated fire-related products of the GMES fast-track services for the land and atmosphere monitoring. spatial correlation of changes in biomass and air pollution impact on absolute values and variability of atm. constituents constituents of primary interest: aerosols, CO2 [Ichoku 2005] [Wooster 2005]

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 17 CORRELATION STUDY: Approach use fire emission inventory GFEDv2 as dummy for future GFAS. It combines [van der Werf et al., ACP 2006] MODIS hot spots CASA vegetation model. 1. obtain custom version of GFEDv2 with 8-day time resolution 2. conversions to GRIB format 3. include fire emissions in IFS 4. compare forecasts with / without fire emissions 5. compare both to observed time series 6. compare the difference to fuel load changes in CASA

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 18 SUMMARY Fire, aka Biomass Burning (BB), emissions are needed globally in near-real time as well as in consistent multi-year time series. No suitable BB emission product is available. Principal shortcomings are accuracy, delivery time, temporal resolution, geographical coverage. Various fire observations complement each other. The development of a Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) is needed to serve the GMES requirements. Product generation needs to exploit existing observations more completely. FRP is very promising due to accuracy of emitted amount calculation and temporal resolution. A quantitative study by HALO is on the way.

HALO Meeting, Toulouse, 11-12/07/2006 Kaiseret al.: Fire and Emission, 19 MORE INFORMATION This work has been funded by the European Commission through the FP6 projects HALO, GEMS, and GEOLAND. THANK YOU! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS