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Modeling prescribed fire impacts on local to regional air quality and potential climate effects
Citation:
Zhou, L., K. Baker, AND S. Napelenok. Modeling prescribed fire impacts on local to regional air quality and potential climate effects. 15th Annual CMAS Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, October 24 - 26, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) Computational Exposure Division (CED) develops and evaluates data, decision-support tools, and models to be applied to media-specific or receptor-specific problem areas. CED uses modeling-based approaches to characterize exposures, evaluate fate and transport, and support environmental diagnostics/forensics with input from multiple data sources. It also develops media- and receptor-specific models, process models, and decision support tools for use both within and outside of EPA.
Description:
Biomass burning, including wildfires and prescribed burns, are of increasing concern due to the potential impacts on ambient air quality. The direct and indirect radiative forcings associated the particulate matter from biomass burning are also raising questions regarding the potential link between wildfires and climate change. A photochemical grid model CMAQ is used to conduct 4 and 2 km grid resolution simulations of prescribed burning experiments in southeast Washington state and western Idaho state in summer 2013. The ground and airborne measurements from the field experiment are used to evaluate the model performance in capturing surface and aloft impacts from the burning events. Source apportionment and source apportionment analysis of downwind ozone and particulate matter is conducted to quantify the impacts of experiments on ambient air quality. With the latest improvements in aerosol and cloud schemes in the model, this study also investigates the potential perturbation to surface energy balance as well as cloud formation.
