Evidence for a larger contribution of smoldering combustion to boreal forest fire emissions from tower observations in Alaska

With recent increases in burned area within boreal forests that have been linked to climate warming, there is a need to better understand the composition of emissions and their impact on atmospheric composition. Most previous studies have estimated boreal fire emission factors from daytime samples collected via aircraft near fire plumes or at the surface near actively burning fires. Here we quantified emission factors for CO and CH4 from a massive regional fire complex in interior Alaska during the summer of 2015 using continuous high-resolution trace gas observations from the CRV tower (Fox, AK). Averaged over the 2015 fire season, the CO/CO2 emission ratio was 0.138±0.048 and the CO emission factor was 145±50 g CO per kg of dry biomass consumed. The CO/CO2 emission ratio was about 35 % higher and more variable than most previous aircraft-based estimates for fresh wildfire emissions. The mean CH4/CO2 emission ratio was 0.010±0.003 and the CH4 emission factor was 6.05±2.09 g CH4 per kg of dry biomass consumed, with means similar to previous reports. CO and CH4 emission factors varied in synchrony, with higher CH4 emission factors observed during periods with lower modified combustion efficiency (MCE). By coupling a fire emissions inventory with an atmospheric model, we identified that at least 35 individual fires contributed to trace gas variations measured at the CRV tower, representing a significant increase in sampling compared to the number of boreal fires measured in all previous boreal forest fire work. The model also indicated that typical mean transit times between trace gas emission and tower measurement were 1–3 days, indicating that the time series sampled combustion across day and night burning phases. The high and variable CO emission factor estimates reported here provide evidence for a more prominent role of smoldering combustion, highlighting the importance of continuously sampling of fires across time-varying environmental conditions that are representative of typical burning conditions.