Biomass burning, aerosol and clouds

Speaker: hugh coe

Chair(S): PAUL WILLIAMS/KATIE Read

Wednesday june 29, 2022, 13:00

Biomass burning is one of the largest sources of atmospheric particulate on a global scale and occurs as a result of forest clearance and agricultural management, as well as natural causes.  All these effects are changing over time.  Biomass burning generates large amounts of particulate which, when emitted into the atmosphere has considerable impact on regional air quality and climate.  There is considerable uncertainty associated with biomass burning particulate that leads to its poor representation in climate models.  This has a number of possible causes.  The emissions are highly dependent on the fuel, the state of the combustion and the atmospheric conditions all of which are highly variable.  The properties of the aerosol depend on the fire conditions.  This leads to production of aerosols with considerable absorbing black carbon or particulate that is composed almost entirely of organic matter.  These have very different optical properties and so affect the atmospheric column in different ways.  The interaction of biomass burning aerosols with cloud may affect both the aerosol and the cloud properties.  The vertical position of the biomass burning aerosol in relation to cloud and the reflectance of the underlying surfaces affects the heating or cooling of the column.   

To examine these issues and advance understanding to underpin climate model descriptions of biomass burning aerosols we have undertaken a number of studies that have involved field observations using the UK Research Aircraft and have examined aerosol properties using laboratory studies.  This talk will describe those experiments and use recent results to illustrate some of the above challenges, placing constraints on the size of the possible effects. 

The seminar will be broadcast live via Zoom, please follow the link below.

https://zoom.us/my/ncasseminarseries 

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