dc.contributor.author
Heinold, Bernd
dc.contributor.author
Baars, Holger
dc.contributor.author
Barja, Boris
dc.contributor.author
Christensen, Matthew
dc.contributor.author
Kubin, Anne
dc.contributor.author
Kubin, Anne
dc.contributor.author
Schepanski, Kerstin
dc.contributor.author
Schutgens, Nick
dc.contributor.author
Senf, Fabian
dc.contributor.author
Schrödner, Roland
dc.date.accessioned
2022-09-20T09:25:15Z
dc.date.available
2022-09-20T09:25:15Z
dc.identifier.uri
https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/36385
dc.identifier.uri
http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/refubium-36101
dc.description.abstract
More than 1 Tg smoke aerosol was emitted into the atmosphere by the exceptional 2019–2020 southeastern Australian wildfires. Triggered by the extreme fire heat, several deep pyroconvective events carried the smoke directly into the stratosphere. Once there, smoke aerosol remained airborne considerably longer than in lower atmospheric layers. The thick plumes traveled eastward, thereby being distributed across the high and mid-latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, enhancing the atmospheric opacity. Due to the increased atmospheric lifetime of the smoke plume, its radiative effect increased compared to smoke that remains in lower altitudes. Global models describing aerosol-climate impacts lack adequate descriptions of the emission height of aerosols from intense wildfires. Here, we demonstrate, by a combination of aerosol-climate modeling and lidar observations, the importance of the representation of those high-altitude fire smoke layers for estimating the atmospheric energy budget. Through observation-based input into the simulations, the Australian wildfire emissions by pyroconvection are explicitly prescribed to the lower stratosphere in different scenarios. Based on our simulations, the 2019–2020 Australian fires caused a significant top-of-atmosphere (TOA) hemispheric instantaneous direct radiative forcing signal that reached a magnitude comparable to the radiative forcing induced by anthropogenic absorbing aerosol. Up to +0.50 W m−2 instantaneous direct radiative forcing was modeled at TOA, averaged for the Southern Hemisphere (+0.25 W m−2 globally) from January to March 2020 under all-sky conditions. At the surface, on the other hand, an instantaneous solar radiative forcing of up to −0.81 W m−2 was found for clear-sky conditions, with the respective estimates depending on the model configuration and subject to the model uncertainties in the smoke optical properties. Since extreme wildfires are expected to occur more frequently in the rapidly changing climate, our findings suggest that high-altitude wildfire plumes must be adequately considered in climate projections in order to obtain reasonable estimates of atmospheric energy budget changes.
en
dc.format.extent
17 Seiten
dc.rights.uri
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject
Australian wildfires
en
dc.subject
smoke aerosol
en
dc.subject
stratospheric injection height
en
dc.subject.ddc
500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik::550 Geowissenschaften, Geologie::551 Geologie, Hydrologie, Meteorologie
dc.title
Important role of stratospheric injection height for the distribution and radiative forcing of smoke aerosol from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires
dc.type
Wissenschaftlicher Artikel
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.doi
10.5194/acp-22-9969-2022
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.journaltitle
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.number
15
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.pagestart
9969
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.pageend
9985
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.volume
22
dcterms.bibliographicCitation.url
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9969-2022
refubium.affiliation
Geowissenschaften
refubium.affiliation.other
Institut für Meteorologie
refubium.resourceType.isindependentpub
no
dcterms.accessRights.openaire
open access
dcterms.isPartOf.eissn
1680-7324
refubium.resourceType.provider
WoS-Alert