Southamerica
Monitoring the Transportof Biomass Burning Emissions and Anthropogenic Pollution in South America
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Short Introduction
The atmospheric transport of biomass burning emissions is monitored through a numerical simulation of the air mass motions using the tracer transport capability of the atmospheric model RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Modeling System, CSU-USA) coupled to a emission model. In this method, the mass conservation equation is solved for carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate material PM2.5. Source emissions of gases and particles associated with biomass burning activities in tropical forest, savanna and pasture are parameterized and introduced in the model. The sources are spatially and temporally distributed and daily assimilated according to the biomass burning spots obtained by remote sensing.
Anthropogenic sources of CO are also included following the EDGAR 3.0 database. The advection, at grid scale, and turbulent transport, at sub-grid scale, are provided by the RAMS parameterizations. A sub-grid transport parameterization, associated to wet and deep and shallow circulation not explicitly resolved by the model due its low spatial resolution, is also introduced. Sinks, associated with generic process of removal/transformation of gases/particles, are parameterised and introduced in the mass conservation equation.
The present model had its development initiated during the Ph. D. program of Saulo Freitas and Karla Longo at Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo under the adviser of the Professors Maria Assunção Silva Dias and Paulo Artaxo, in collaboration with Professor Pedro Silva Dias. Further improvements were carried out at NASA Ames Research Center in collaboration with Dr. Robert Chatfield and Dr. Georg Grell (NOAA FSL). Nowadays, the model development is on progress at CPTEC-INPE in collaboration with USP.
Full Background Information
· Monitoring the transport of biomass burning emissions and anthropogenic pollution in South America (PDF, 865 KB)
