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Project ID: 10-S-02-1

Year: 2010

Date Started: 04/01/2010

Date Completed: 09/28/2012

Title: Identification of Necessary Conditions for Arctic Transport of Smoke from U.S. Fires

Project Proposal Abstract: New regulations for black carbon (BC) currently under consideration by Congress and the EPA could affect management decisions on wildfires and the ability to conduct prescribed burning. Congressional testimony has suggested various mitigation strategies for Arctic BC including shifting the seasonal timing of continental U.S. prescribed burning (e.g. Zender, 2007). However, many questions remain regarding when and how continental U.S. fires contribute to Arctic BC. In particular, what regions, type of fires, timing, and plume injection heights along with transport meteorological patterns are most likely to result in continental U.S. fires affecting the Arctic? To address these questions, we propose a 30-year high-resolution back-trajectory study coupled with map-typing of the synoptic meteorological patterns required for BC transport, the first of its kind focused directly on contiguous U.S. (CONUS) fires. The result of this work will determine the necessary conditions for emissions from a CONUS fire to potentially reach the Arctic based on fire type (e.g. wildfire vs. prescribed), fire location, time-of-year, and plume injection height. It will further determine, region by region, what synoptic meteorological progressions are required to allow Arctic transport and their frequency of occurrence. While other factors may limit the Arctic impact from any given fire (for example, smoke washing out in rainstorms), by determining the basic necessary conditions, this study will be able to focus future, more complex modeling studies, as well as current policy discussions, to those times and places of greatest interest. It can also provide an answer to the corollary question of Arctic impact  What are the times, places, and conditions where CONUS fires have little or no chance of impacting the Arctic? In addition to research results and summaries, a forecast tool will be developed that determines when conditions promoting BC transport to the Arctic are imminent based on daily operational National Weather Service predictions. The work will be coordinated with the EPA, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group Smoke Committee, and international black carbon efforts including the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Atmospheric Pollution (HTAP).

Principal Investigator: Narasimhan K. Larkin

Agency/Organization: Forest Service

Branch or Dept: PNW-AirFire Research Team

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	Sean Raffuse	Sonoma Technology, Inc.
Co-Principal Investigator	Tara M. Strand	Forest Service	PNW-AirFire Research Team
Collaborator/Contributor	Patrick D. Dolwick	EPA-Environmental Protection Agency	Air Quality Planning & Standards
Collaborator/Contributor	Susan M. O’Neill	Forest Service	PNW-AirFire Research Team
Federal Cooperator	Brian E. Potter	Forest Service	PNW-Seattle-Managing Natural Disturbances
Federal Fiscal Representative	Rebecca A. Slick	Forest Service	PNW-Pacific Northwest Research Station

Project Locations

Consortium

Level	State	Agency	Unit
NATIONAL		FED

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

	ID	Type	Title
	10135	NonRefereed Publication	Mitigating the Impact of Prescribed Burning in the Continental United States Using Trends in Synoptic Scale Transport to the Arctic Region

Supporting Documents

There are no supporting documents available for this project.

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