Abstract

In 2003 Portugal faced the worst fire season ever recorded. The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the effects of the 2003 forest fires on the air quality, applying four numerical modelling systems (LOTOS-EUROS, MM5-CMAQ, WRF/chem and MM5-CHIMERE), and to compare their results with air quality data from several monitoring stations in Portugal. Forest fire emissions have been calculated taking into account the most suitable parameters for Portuguese forest/fire characteristics and the area burned by each forest fire. They were added to the anthropogenic and biogenic gridded emissions, according to the fire location and assuming a uniform fire spread and injection into the mixing layer. Simulations were performed during August 2003 regarding gaseous and particulate matter pollutants. To better evaluate the impact of forest fire emission on the air quality, a baseline simulation was performed, including the “conventional” emissions, along with a forest fire simulation, which also considered emissions from forest fires. Modelling hourly results, namely particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O3) concentration, values have been compared to measurement data at several monitoring locations. In general, the different modelling systems show a good performance, which improves when forest fire emissions are considered, particularly for the PM concentrations. The influence of the forest fire emissions in O3 formation is not so evident and needs more attention. The evaluation of the impact of forest fires on the air quality should be included in air quality assessment procedures, specifically in areas that

Highlights

  • Smoke has to be considered as one of the several disturbing effects of forest fires; it contains important amounts of carbon monoxide and dioxide (CO and CO2), methane (CH4), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ammonia (NH3), particulate matter (PM), particles with a mean diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and particles with a mean diameter less than 10 μm (PM10), non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) and other chemical compounds

  • The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the effect of forest fires emissions on the air quality applying four numerical modelling systems (LOTOS-EUROS, MM5-CMAQ, Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)/chem and MM5-CHIMERE) along a particular fire season, and to compare their results with air quality data from several monitoring stations in Portugal

  • This work investigated the impacts of forest fire emissions on the air quality over Portugal

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Summary

Introduction

Smoke has to be considered as one of the several disturbing effects of forest fires; it contains important amounts of carbon monoxide and dioxide (CO and CO2), methane (CH4), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ammonia (NH3), particulate matter (PM), particles with a mean diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and particles with a mean diameter less than 10 μm (PM10), non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) and other chemical compounds The effects of these emissions are felt at different levels: from the contribution to the greenhouse effect [1, 2] to the occurrence of local atmospheric pollution episodes, including high O3 concentrations at medium distances from the emission sources [3].

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