Improve Fire Plume-Rise Modeling in the CESM framework

Abstract:

Fire plume height, at which wildfire emissions are injected into the atmosphere, determines the lifetimes and transport range of emitted pollutants, strongly affecting the climate forcing through fire aerosols. Long-range transport of fire pollutants were often observed by satellite and in situ observations. In earth system modeling, plume rise is a large uncertainty in simulating fire perturbations to regional climate. We make use of extensive satellite observations and a process-based model to improve plume rise simulations in the CESM-CAM5 model. This newly developed plume-rise scheme can reasonably capture the global distribution of fire plume height in satellite observations. We also explore the diurnal and seasonal variations due to meteorology and fire activity and severity. The enhancement of fire modeling capability of the climate model is analyzed.