Journal
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
Volume 34, Issue 17, Pages 7219-7238Publisher
AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0193.1
Keywords
Aerosol radiative effect; Biosphere/atmosphere interactions; Wildfires
Categories
Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy's Biological and Environmental Research (BER) division of the Office of Science
- Earth System Model Development Program [DE-SC0021302]
- Office of Science's Regional and GlobalModel Analysis program through the Reducing Uncertainties in Biogeochemical Interactions through Synthesis and Computation Scientific Focus Area (RUBISCO SFA) [DEAC02-05CH11231]
- Earth System Model Development Program's support of E3SM
- Enabling Aerosol-cloud interactions at GLobal convection-permitting scalES (EAGLES)'' project [74358]
- E3SM project
- DOE [DE-AC05-76RL01830]
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0021302] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
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Fire-emitted aerosols have significant impacts on global climate and vegetation photosynthesis, and quantification can be done through adjusting aerosol optimization models.
Fire-emitted aerosols play an important role in influencing Earth's climate, directly by scattering and absorbing radiation and indirectly by influencing cloud microphysics. The quantification of fire-aerosol interactions, however, remains challenging and subject to uncertainties in emissions, plume parameterization, and aerosol properties. Here we optimized fire-associated aerosol emissions in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) using the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) and AERONET aerosol optical depth (AOD) observations during 1997-2016. We distributed fire emissions vertically using smoke plume heights from Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) satellite observations. From the optimization, we estimate that global fires emit 45.5 Tg yr(-1) of primary particulate organic matter and 3.9 Tg yr(-1) of black carbon. We then performed two climate simulations with and without the optimized fire emissions. We find that fire aerosols significantly increase global AOD by 14% +/- 7% and contribute to a reduction in net shortwave radiation at the surface (-2.3 +/- 0.5 W m(-2)). Together, fire-induced direct and indirect aerosol effects cause annual mean global land surface air temperature to decrease by 0.17 degrees +/- 0.15 degrees C, relative humidity to increase by 0.4% +/- 0.3%, and diffuse light fraction to increase by 0.5% +/- 0.3%. In response, GPP declines by 2.8 Pg C yr(-1) as a result of large positive drivers (decreases in temperature and increases in humidity and diffuse light), nearly cancelling out large negative drivers (decreases in shortwave radiation and soil moisture). Our analysis highlights the importance of fire aerosols in modifying surface climate and photosynthesis across the tropics.
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