References

ACPD

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions

ACPD

1680-7375

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acpd-9-7413-2009

Tracking the emission and transport of pollution from wildfires using the IASI CO retrievals: analysis of the summer 2007 Greek fires

Turquety

¹ ³ Hurtmans

² Hadji-Lazaro

¹ Coheur

P.-F.

² Clerbaux

¹ ² Josset

¹ Tsamalis

UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS UMR8190, LATMOS/IPSL, Paris, France

Spectroscopie de l'atmosphère, Chimie Quantique et Photophysique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

now at: Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Paris, France

20 03 2009

9 2 7413 7455

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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In this paper, we analyze the performance of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), launched in October 2006 on board METOP-A, for the monitoring of carbon monoxide (CO) during extreme fire events, focusing on the record-breaking fires which devastated thousands of square kilometers of forest in Greece during the last week (23–30) of August 2007. After an assessment of the quality of the profiles retrieved using the Fast Optimal Retrievals on Layers for IASI (FORLI) algorithm, the information provided on fire emissions and subsequent pollution outflow is discussed. Large CO plumes were observed above the Mediterranean Basin and North Africa, with total CO columns exceeding 30×1018 molecules/cm2 and absolute volume mixing ratio up to 22 ppmv. The average root-mean-square (RMS) difference between simulated and observed spectra is close to the estimated radiometric noise level, slightly increasing (by ~14%) in the fresh fire plumes. CO profiles are retrieved with a vertical resolution of about 8 km, with ~1.7 pieces of independent information on the vertical in the region considered and a maximum sensitivity in the free troposphere (~4–5 km). Using the integrated total amount, the increase in CO burden due to these fires is estimated to 0.321 Tg, ~40% of the total annual anthropogenic emissions in Greece. These CO enhancements are in good agreement with the aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieved from the MODIS measurements, highlighting a rapid transport of trace gases and aerosols across the Mediterranean Basin (less than one day). While the coarse vertical resolution will not allow the location of the exact plume height, the large CO enhancements observed in the lower troposphere are consistent with the maximum aerosol backscatter coefficient at ~2 km detected by the CALIPSO lidar in space (CALIOP). This indicates that the general level of transport can be derived (lower, middle or upper troposphere) but that it needs to be accompanied by a systematic confrontation with sensitivity profiles and boundary layer height.

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