Spatial and temporal characteristics of correlation between CO2 and fire pixel counts in China

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of major green house gases affecting global climate. Biomass burning caused by fire is an important emission source of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 concentration retrieved from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and fire pixel counts (FPC) obtained from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) from 2003 to 2010 over China were obtained and analyzed. The characteristics of correlation between CO and FPC were analyzed in time series. To investigate the spatial characteristics of correlation between CO2 and fire, energy fires emitted based on the Global Fire Emissions Database v3 (GFED3) was used. CO2 concentration was steadily increased in both daytime and nighttime. The seasonal distribution of CO2 concentration and FPC had the similar pattern as the highest value appeared in Spring and lowest value in Autumn. What’s more, the changes of the aggregated CO2 concentration had a good agreement with the changes of the total FPC. However, the concentration of CO2 emitted from fires was low except Heilongjiang province. And the tempo-spatial characteristic of CO2 and FPC were similar with each other. It was different with characteristic of correlation between CO2 and FPC in whole country.