SIMULATING LOCAL AND INTERCONTINENTAL POLLUTANT EFFECTS OF
BIOMASS BURNING: INTEGRATION OF SEVERAL REMOTELY SENSED DATASETS
Robert B. Chatfield
John A. Vastano
Liane Guild
Christine Hlavka
James A. Brass
NASA Ames Research Center
Earth Systems Science Division (245-5)
Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
ISPRS Commission VII / Working Group 7
ABSTRACT
Burning to clear land for crops and to destroy pests is an integral and largely unavoldable part of tropical
agriculture. It is easy to note but difficult to quantity using remote sensing. This report describes our efforts
to integrate remotely sensed data into our computer model of tropical chemical trace-gas emissions weather,
and reaction chemistry (using the MSS mesoscale model and our own Global-Regional Atmospheric
Chemistry Simulator). The effects of burning over the continents of Africa and South America have been
noticed in observations from several satellites. Smoke plumes hundreds of kilometres long may be seen
individually, or may merge into a large smoke pall over thousands of kilometres of these continents. These
features are related to intense pollution in the much more confined regions with heavy burning. These
emissions also translocate nitrogen thousands of kilometres in the tropical ecosystems, with large fixed-
nitrogen losses balanced partially by locally intense fertilization downwind, where nitric acid is rained out.
At a much larger scale, various satellite measurements have indicated the escape of carbon monoxide and
ozone into large filaments which extend across the Tropical an Southern Atlantic Ocean. Our work relates the
source emissions, estimated in part from remote sensing, in part from conventional surface reports, to the
concentrations of these gases over these intercontinental regions. We will mention work in progress to use
meteorological satellite data (AVHRR, GOES, an Meteosat) to estimate the surface temperature and extent
and height biogeochemistry. We will compare our simulations and interpretation of remote observations to
the international cooperation involving Brazil, South Africa, and the USA in the TRACE-A (Transport and
atmospheric Chemistry near the Equator - Atlantic) and SAFARI (Southem Africa Fire Atmosphere
Research Initiative) and remote-sensing/aircraft/ecosystem observational campaigns.
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