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    • Pyrocumulonimbus Events over British Columbia in August 2017: Results from the NASA GEOS Earth System Model

    Metadata Updated: April 24, 2025

    Model data associated with the manuscript submitted in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Journal, titled, " Pyrocumulonimbus Events over British Columbia in 2017: The Long-term Transport and Radiative Impacts of Smoke Aerosols in the Stratosphere".

    Abstract. Interactions of meteorology with wildfires in British Columbia, Canada during August 2017 led to three major pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) events that resulted in the injection of large amounts of smoke aerosols and other combustion products at the local upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). These plumes of UTLS smoke with elevated values of aerosol extinction and backscatter compared to the background state were readily tracked by multiple satellite-based instruments as they spread across the Northern Hemisphere (NH). The plumes resided in the lower stratosphere for about 8-10 months following the fire injections. To investigate the radiative impacts of these events on the Earth system, we performed a number of simulations with the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM). Observations from multiple remote-sensing instruments were used to calibrate the injection parameters (location, amount, composition, and heights) and optical properties of the smoke aerosols in the model. The resulting simulations of three-dimensional smoke transport were evaluated for a year from the day of injections using daily observations from OMPS-LP (Ozone Mapping Profiler Suite Limb Profiler). The model simulated rate of ascent, hemispheric spread, and residence time of the smoke aerosols in the stratosphere are in close agreement with OMPS-LP observations. We found that both aerosol self-lofting and the large-scale atmospheric motion play important roles in lifting the smoke plumes from near the tropopause altitudes (~12 km) to about 22-23 km into the atmosphere. Further, our estimations of the radiative impacts of the pyroCb-emitted smoke aerosols showed that the smoke caused additional warming of the atmosphere by about 0.6-1 W/m2 (zonal mean) that persisted for about 2-3 months after the injections in regions north of 40oN. The surface experienced a comparable magnitude of cooling. The atmospheric warming is mainly located in the stratosphere, coincident with the location of the smoke plumes, leading to an increase in zonal mean shortwave (SW) heating rates of 0.02-0.04 K/day during September 2017.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons CCZero

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    Dates

    Metadata Created Date December 1, 2022
    Metadata Updated Date April 24, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date December 1, 2022
    Metadata Updated Date April 24, 2025
    Publisher data.nasa.gov
    Maintainer
    Identifier https://data.nasa.gov/api/views/getj-4f5g
    Data First Published 2020-11-18
    Language en-US
    Data Last Modified 2025-04-23
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Data Quality True
    Harvest Object Id 79a0aeb3-bdcb-427e-bc84-d6c9868996c2
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/pyrocumulonimbus-events-over-british-columbia-in-august-2017-results-from-the-nasa-geos-ea
    License http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
    Program Code 026:001
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 8e00ad1c481e4f02be342a2aacd2fdd8a5f575f9835420e686d322ec087e79fd
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Temporal 2017-08-13/2018-07-31

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