Abstract

The bushfires that occurred in Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 were unprecedented in terms of their scale, intensity, and impacts. Using nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) data measured by the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), together with fire counts and fire radiative power (FRP) from MODIS, we analyzed the temporal and spatial variation of NO2 and CO column densities over three selected areas covering savanna and temperate forest vegetation. The ΔNO2 / ΔCO emission ratio and emission factor were also estimated. The ΔNO2 / ΔCO emission ratio was found to be 1.5 ± 1.2 for temperate forest fire and ranged from 2 ± 1.3 to 2.8 ± 1.8 for savanna fire. For savanna and temperate forest fires, satellite-derived NOx emission factors are 1.29 g kg-1 and 1.2 g kg-1 separately, while CO emission factors are 62.34 and 112.5 g kg-1. This study demonstrates that the large-scale emission ratio from the TROPOMI satellite for different biomass burnings can help identify the relative contribution of smoldering and flaming activities and their impacts on the regional atmospheric composition and air quality.

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