Project Number: 20-005

Research

Title: Using Satellite Observations to Quantify Surface PM2.5 Impacts from Biomass Burning Smoke

Institution(s) Represented: Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. (AER)

Lead PI: Matthew Alvarado

AQRP Project Manager: Elena McDonald-Buller

TCEQ Project Liaison: Fernando Mercado

Awarded Amount: $173,692.00

Abstract
Biomass burning smoke can have major impacts on surface PM2.5 concentrations both near the fires and hundreds of miles downwind. These smoke impacts pose two challenges for air quality managers. First, they want to accurately report the potential smoke impacts in time for the public to take protective actions. Second, they need to estimate the recent impacts of smoke on PM2.5 in order to determine which elevated PM2.5 episodes may fall under the US EPA Exceptional Events Rule (EER). The EER determines the conditions under which the US EPA will forgo comparison of policy relevant air monitoring data to a relevant National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS).

NOAA and NASA satellite observations provide valuable information on the locations of fires and transport of smoke. Existing analysis products, such as the NOAA Hazard Mapping System (HMS) Fire and Smoke product, provide observed fire locations and identify regions that are being impacted by biomass burning smoke. However, there are multiple products that use different techniques to identify smoke plumes, and thus may disagree on the extent of the area covered by biomass burning smoke. In addition, as these products primarily use passive, single-angle geostationary and polar satellite observations (due to their greater spatial coverage), these products do not currently provide information on the height of the smoke plumes or estimates of the surface impacts of the observed smoke. An analysis of existing smoke products that increases our confidence in the identification of smoke and provides an estimate of smoke height and surface PM2.5 impact would greatly help TCEQ air quality managers protect the public and properly enforce air quality standards.

In this project, we will evaluate the ability of these existing remote sensing smoke products to accurately and consistently identify regions impacted by smoke. We will compare and evaluate the smoke products using additional polar satellite observations that are sensitive to smoke, specifically observations of CO and NH3 from CrIS and AIRS and aerosol absorption Angstrom exponent (a proxy for brown carbon) from OMI. We will evaluate two methods for estimating the height of the plumes detected by the HMS and other smoke products: the plume height estimates from the MODIS MAIAC algorithm and a new method based on the observed transport direction of the smoke plumes. Finally, we will test different statistical and model-based approaches to estimate the impact of the observed smoke on surface PM2.5.

The objectives of this project are thus:

To compare different methods for identifying smoke plumes from NOAA and NASA remote sensing imagery;
To investigate different remote sensing techniques to estimate the height and vertical profiles of these smoke plumes; and
To investigate new statistical and machine learning methods to relate the smoke AOD observations to surface PM2.5 concentrations.

This work directly responds to the AQRP priority research area "Estimate Impacts of Smoke from Biomass Burning" by investigating the question "Is it possible to quantify ground level impacts of biomass burning (PM2.5) using remote sensing tools, such as the NOAA Hazard Mapping System (HMS) Fire and Smoke product?".

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Research

Research

FY 2020 - 2021

Project Number: 20-005