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fire emission
inventories might have overestimated NO x emissions from savanna and grassland
One of the issues that emerge from these
findings is that recent
fires by a factor of 2.5.
We note that the results obtained in this study might be affected by errors in the
satellite-based retrieval of TVC NO 2 and FRP as well as in the few assumptions
made. A detailed discussion on the possible errors can be found in Schreier et al.
( 2014a , b ).
4 Conclusions and Outlook
A simple statistical approach has been developed to estimate
fire emission rates
(FERs) and emission factors (EFs) of NO x from
fires using the strong correlation
between satellite-derived parameters tropospheric NO 2 vertical column (TVC NO 2 )
and
fire radiative power (FRP). After the conversion of TVC NO 2 into production
rates of NO x from
re (P f ), slopes of the linear regression between Pf f and FRP, here
referred to as FERs of NO x , have been derived for different biomes and regions.
The subsequent conversion of FERs into EFs of NO x is based on the quantitative
link between FRP and dry matter combustion rate.
The EFs of NO x are estimated at 1.83, 1.48, 2.96, and 0.72 g kg 1 for tropical
forest, savanna and grassland, crop residue, and boreal forest, respectively. The EFs
presented here fall within one standard deviation of the mean EFs as reported by
Andreae and Merlet ( 2001 ) and/or Akagi et al. ( 2011 ). While there is overall
agreement between the EFs and the comparable values presented in the literature for
tropical forest, crop residue, and boreal forest, we found substantial differences for
savanna and grassland.
Consequently, recent
fire emission inventories could have overestimated NO x
emissions from savanna and grassland
fires by a factor of 2.5. As savanna and
grassland is one of the major land cover types burned on Earth, this would have a
signi
cant effect on the estimation of open biomass burning emissions of NO x on
the global scale.
Further work needs to be done to establish whether other satellite sensors (e.g.
SCIAMACHY and SEVIRI) reveal similar results as those reported here for
GOME-2 and MODIS on board Terra.
References
Akagi SK, Yokelson RJ, Wiedinmyer C, Alvarado MJ, Reid JS, Karl T, Crounse JD, Wennberg
PO (2011) Emission factors for open and domestic biomass burning for use in atmospheric
models. Atmos Chem Phys 11:4039
4072
Alvarado MJ, Prinn RG (2009) Formation of ozone and growth of aerosols in young smoke
plumes from biomass burning: 1. Lagrangian parcel studies. J Geophys Res Atmos 114
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