Abstract
Due to its unique natural conditions and agricultural tradition, northeast China (NEC) has formed a distinctive open biomass burning habit with local-specific biomass burning aerosol features. In this research, with the help of a newly optimized biomass burning aerosol identification method, which combines satellite aerosol and fire observational products with the HYSPLIT model forward trajectories, a systematic and quantitative analysis of aerosol emitted from open biomass burning in the NEC region are conducted to determine in detail its local-specific features, such as influence region, aging characteristics, and seasonal variation. During the 72-h aging process after biomass burning emission, aerosol particle size growth found with the Angstrom exponent declines from 1.6 to 1.54. Additionally, the volume fraction of black carbon decreases from 4.5% to 3.1%, leading to the Single Scattering Albedo (SSA) increasing from the fresh state of 0.84 to the aged state of 0.89. The cooling effect at TOA, due to the existence of aerosol, is enhanced by more than 70%, indicating its severe and dynamic influence on climate change. The average AOD in spring is 0.63, which is higher than autumn’s value of 0.52, indicating that biomass burning is more intensive in spring. Compared to autumn, aerosols emitted from spring biomass burning in the NEC region have lower sphere fraction, smaller particle size, higher volume fraction of black carbon, higher absorbability, and weaker cooling effect at TOA, which can be partly explained by the drier ambient environment and lower water content of the burned crop straw in spring.
Highlights
Biomass burning can release massive aerosol into the earth’s atmosphere, causing air pollution [1,2], damaging human health [3], and influencing the world climate [4,5,6]
In this research, to determine localspecific features, such as influence region, aging characteristics, and seasonal variation, we conducted a deep quantitative analysis of aerosol emitted from open biomass burning in the northeast China (NEC) region, using a long-time series of satellite observational data with the help of a series of auxiliary data and models
The average transport trajectory calculated from the identified HYSPLIT trajectories, which only have traced back fire point(s) in the NEC region, is added to Figure 3b to represent the general trajectory of the aerosol emitted from open biomass burning in northeast China
Summary
Biomass burning can release massive aerosol into the earth’s atmosphere, causing air pollution [1,2], damaging human health [3], and influencing the world climate [4,5,6]. During the field-based combustion experiments in NEC, Wang et al [11] studied the carbonaceous aerosols emitted from main types of crop residue burning to characterize the particle number concentration, chemical components of fine particulate matter and optical properties, using a suite of fast-response online portable instruments. Markowicz et al [26] simulated the climatic effect of intensive biomass burning, finding that signs of aerosol radiative forcing at Top of Atmosphere (TOA) could change during the transport process after being emitted from the source region. In this research, to determine localspecific features, such as influence region, aging characteristics, and seasonal variation, we conducted a deep quantitative analysis of aerosol emitted from open biomass burning in the NEC region, using a long-time series of satellite observational data with the help of a series of auxiliary data and models.
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