Abstract
Emissions from biomass burning (BB) are a key source of atmospheric tracer gases that affect the atmospheric carbon cycle. We estimated four types of global BB emissions using a bottom-up approach and by combining the remote sensing products related to fire distribution with two aboveground biomass (AGB) and two land cover classification (LCC) distributions. The sensitivity of the estimates of BB emissions to the AGB and LCC data was evaluated using the carbon monoxide (CO) emissions associated with each BB estimate. We found a substantial spatial difference in CO emissions for both the AGB and LCC data, which resulted in a large (factor of approximately three) spread of estimates for the mean annual CO emissions. We simulated atmospheric CO variability using an atmospheric tracer transport model and the BB emissions estimates and compared it with ground-based and satellite observations. At ground-based observation sites during fire seasons, statistical comparisons indicated that the impact of differences in the BB emissions estimates on atmospheric CO variability was poorly defined in our simulations. However, when compared at the regional and global scales, the distribution of atmospheric CO concentrations in the simulations show substantial differences among the estimates of BB emissions. These results indicate that the estimates of BB emissions are highly sensitive to the AGB and LCC data.
Highlights
The majority of biomass burning (BB) is related to human activities, with only a small fraction caused by natural processes 15 such as lightning (Seiler and Crutzen, 1980; Balch et al, 2017)
aboveground biomass (AGB) availability of ≤ 1, 5, and 10 kg m−2 accounts for 43%, 76%, and 94%, respectively, all grids for Globbiomass, and 51%, 83%, and 96%, respectively, for GEOCARBON (Fig. 1b)
Using AGB data from Globbiomass and GEOCARBON, we showed that the magnitude of AGB from Globbiomass tends to be larger than that from GEOCARBON in approximately 35%, leading to the resulting BB emissions estimates based on Globbiomass being more than twice those made using GEOCARBON over the globe
Summary
The majority of biomass burning (BB) is related to human activities, with only a small fraction caused by natural processes 15 such as lightning (Seiler and Crutzen, 1980; Balch et al, 2017). Various agriculture and economic processes involve BB; e.g., clearing of forest and brush land for agricultural use, or controlling fuel accumulation in forests (Andreae, 1991). Such intensive activities have significant implications for changes in regional land cover from fire-resistant to fire-prone systems (Turetsky et al, 2015). Water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2) are the primary products of the burning of organic materials.
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