Abstract View
Biomass Burning Particle Emission Factors and Size Distributions Measured during FIREX-AQ
ELIZABETH WIGGINS, Richard Moore, Claire Robinson, Edward Winstead, Amber Soja, Emily Gargulinski, NASA
Abstract Number: 404
Working Group: Combustion
Abstract
Biomass burning is a significant source of atmospheric aerosols that degrade air quality and exert a substantial radiative forcing on the climate system. During the summer of 2019 we collected in-situ measurements of the physical and optical characteristics of biomass burning aerosols emitted from wildfires in the Western US and agricultural fires in the Southeastern US as part of the joint NASA-NOAA mission FIREX-AQ. We measured aerosol number concentrations and size distributions for bulk aerosols and non-volatile aerosols along with their absorbing and scattering properties. The fires we sampled represent a rich variety of fuel types and compositions, environmental conditions at the time of burning, and fire characteristics such as combustion completeness. In this study we calculated particle number and mass emission factors and size distributions for total and non-volatile fire emitted aerosols. We compared our aerosol emission factors and size distributions to ground-based fire characteristics to better understand the factors that influence the physical properties of aerosol emissions. The results of this study will reduce variability in size resolved particle emission factors by isolating the influence of select fire characteristics and ultimately improve the representation of biomass burning aerosols and their radiative influence in atmospheric models including smoke forecasting and climate models.