EE Related Reports

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Reports, Papers Related to Exceptional Event Analysis

Interesting work that uses detailed measurements by the Pittsburgh supersites to show how Quebec Fires impacted air quality in the Pittsburgh area during the episode. This paper shows the added severity for pollution episodes in an area already burdened by large anthropogenic emission rates due to impact of 2002 Quebec wildfires. Use of detailed supersites data allowed probing of such items as: high levels of atmospheric processing increased sulfate accumulation and SOA formation and brought PM2.5 mass concentrations close to, and ozone mixing ratios in excess of, the NAAQS; {It should be noted that in others areas of the East during this event daily PM2.5 levels were well above the-then daily naaqs of 65 ug/m3 (in fact, at some sites just organic carbon alone was >65 ug/m3}. Single particle measurements of UFM were found to be essential for understanding these phenomena because they distinguish: (1) biomasss-particles from local ones by their EC/OC and K content and (2) relatively unprocessed particles from ones with substantial secondary content by the presence of oxygenated organics and so4. Paper also discusses the prospects of increasing wildfire activity under a warming climate may increase the frequency and severity of such events (and thus a need for more detailed ambient data may be necessary to help explain phenomena and sources).

The urban fossil carbon was 4–20 times larger than the neighboring rural sites for both seasons. OC and EC from IMPROVE and radiocarbon data were used to estimate the fossil and contemporary EC/TC ratios for the winter and summer seasons. These ratios were applied to IMPROVE carbon data to estimate the fraction of contemporary carbon at mostly rural sites throughout the United States.

Lee Tarnay - Yosemite

Tom Moore, AQ Program Manager - Attached is the presentation I gave, a number of the slides have notes below, that I emphasized during the talk.

  • WRAP Fire Emissions Tracking System (FETS) http://www.wrapfets.org/ - basis of the 2 Joint Fire Sciences Program projects we are working on, which are:
OnLine Tool will be developed through both projects.

Couple of other key references:

* Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity. [MTBS Project Homepage, USDA Forest Service/U.S. Geological Survey.] Available online:http://mtbs.gov/index.html
* Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product. Satellite Services Division – Office of Satellite Data Processing and Distribution, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Available online: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/land/hms.html

Lee Tarney, Yosemite - The actual product is pretty fun to browse: http://manwe.ucmerced.edu/forecasts/index2.html