A253-02
Biomass Burning Observations From the 2020 Wildfire Season in Eastern Australia

Thursday, 17 December 2020: 05:34
Virtual
Asher Paul Mouat1, Clare Paton-Walsh2, Jack Simmons3, Jhonathan Gamboa3, Travis Naylor3, Malcolm Possell4, Kathryn Emmerson5, Yuyang Peng1 and Jennifer Kaiser6, (1)Georgia Institute of Technology Main Campus, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Atlanta, GA, United States, (2)University of Wollongong, Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry, School of Chemistry, Wollongong, NSW, Australia, (3)University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia, (4)University of Sydney, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Sydney, NSW, Australia, (5)CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Australia, (6)Georgia Institute of Technology Main Campus, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Atlanta, GA, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
The scale and severity of the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season triggered severe pollution events and led to significant population exposure to smoke. Analysis of the smoke’s composition is crucial in determining the impacts of bushfires on atmospheric composition and human health. Wildfires emit large amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are directly detrimental to human health, and that also contribute to secondary organic aerosol and ozone formation. The speciation and magnitude of emissions remains under constrained in models, primarily due to high variability dependent on fuel type and stage of burning. During the COALA-2020 campaign (Characterizing Organics and Aerosol Loading Over Australia, 2020) in Wollongong, NSW, we sampled aged smoke approximately 50 km downwind from the nearest fires in early February using an Ionicon PTR-ToF-MS 4000. We will present observations of biomass burning tracers (e.g. furan, formic acid, acetonitrile) and discuss enhancement ratios relative to various combustion-related compounds such as CO, CO2, and C2H3N. Our analysis will examine the chemical processing of emissions from the Australian wildfires using VOC/OVOC tracer pairs and modeled back-trajectories.
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