Abstract
Abstract. Biomass burning has attracted great concerns for the emission of particular matters and trace gases, which substantially impacts air quality, human health, and climate change. Meanwhile, large areas of dark char, carbon residue produced in incomplete combustion, can stick to the surface over fire-prone areas after open burning, leading to a sharp drop in surface albedo, so-called “surface darkening”. However, exploration into such surface albedo declines and the radiative and meteorological effects is still fairly limited. As one of the highest-yield agricultural areas, eastern China features intensive straw burning every early summer, the harvest season for winter wheat, which was particularly strong in 2012. Satellite retrievals show that the surface albedo decline over fire-prone areas was significant, especially in the near-infrared band, which can reach −0.16. Observational evidence of abnormal surface warming was found by comparing radiosonde and reanalysis data. Most sites around intensive burned scars show a positive deviation, extending especially in the downwind area. Comparisons between “pre-fire” and “post-fire” from 2007 to 2015 indicated a larger temperature bias of the forecast during the post-fire stage. The signal becomes more apparent between 14:00 and 20:00 LT. Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) simulations suggest that including surface darkening can decrease model bias and well-captured temperature variation after burning at sites in fire areas and their adjacent area. This work highlights the importance of biomass burning induced albedo change in weather forecast and regional climate.
Highlights
Biomass burning (BB) refers to open or quasi-open combustion of plants or organic fuels, including forest fires, savannah fires, peat burning, and crop residue burning in fields (Andreae, 1991; Andreae and Merlet, 2001; Fearnside, 2000; Thompson, 1996)
To figure out surface albedo change induced by biomass burning and its impact on regional meteorology in eastern China, an investigation into the relationship between surface albedo change and temperature anomalies was conducted based on meteorological observations and satellite retrievals, combined with WRF-Chem simulations
This study focuses on the intensive wheat straw burning that occurred every early summer in the Yellow–Huai River area (YHR) area, the major wheat-producing area in eastern China
Summary
Biomass burning (BB) refers to open or quasi-open combustion of plants or organic fuels, including forest fires, savannah fires, peat burning, and crop residue burning in fields (Andreae, 1991; Andreae and Merlet, 2001; Fearnside, 2000; Thompson, 1996). Decreased surface albedo enhances the capacity of fire-affected surface to absorb solar radiation under clear-sky conditions, perturbing the surface energy budget and the process of land– atmosphere interaction, and modifying local or even regional circulation (Gatebe et al, 2014) These changes in meteorological parameters will be important for weather and air quality forecast (Ding et al, 2013a; Yang et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2016). The striking spectral contrast between dark charcoal deposits over burned surface and bright ripe wheat could cause distinct physical signals, socalled surface darkening (Govaerts et al, 2002; Pereira et al, 1999) The influence of such surface albedo decline on the local and regional energy budget can be significant (Jin and Roy, 2005), especially in summer when solar radiation is extremely strong. Which is of assignable climatological significance and should not be neglected
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