Assessing the contribution of global wildfire biomass burning to BaP contamination in the Arctic

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have become cause for growing concern in the Arctic ecosys-tems, partly due to their stable levels despite global emission reduction. Wildfire is considered one of the primary sources that influence PAH levels and trends in the Arctic, but quantitative investigations of this influence are still lacking. This study estimates the global emissions of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), a congener of PAHs with high carcinogenicity, from forest and grassland fires from 2001 to 2020 and simulates the contributions of wildfire-induced BaP emissions from different source regions to BaP contamination in the Arctic. We find that global wildfires contributed 29.3% to annual averaging BaP concentrations in the Arctic from 2001 to 2020. Additionally, we show that wildfires contributed significantly to BaP con-centrations in the Arctic after 2011, enhancing it from 10.1% in 2011 to 83.9% in 2020. Our results reveal that wildfires accounted for 94.2% and 50.8% of BaP levels in the Asian Arctic during boreal summer and autumn, respectively, and 74.2% and 14.5% in the North American Arctic for the same seasons. The source-tagging approach identified that local wildfire biomass emissions were the largest source of BaP in the Arctic, accounting for 65.7% of its concentration, followed by those of Northern Asia (17.8%) and Northern North America (13.7%). Our findings anticipate wildfires to play a larger role in Arctic PAH contaminations alongside continually decreasing anthropogenic emissions and climate warming in the future.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study estimated the global emissions of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) from forest and grassland fires from 2001 to 2020 and simulated the contributions of wildfire-induced BaP emissions to BaP contamination in the Arctic. The results showed that global wildfires contributed 29.3% to annual averaging BaP concentrations in the Arctic and that wildfires significantly enhanced BaP concentrations in the Arctic after 2011. The study also identified local wildfire biomass emissions as the largest source of BaP in the Arctic, followed by emissions from Northern Asia and Northern North America.