8 minute read
EYES ON EARTH
Eyes on THE EARTH
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service collects valuable data on wildfires and their pollutants, Dr Mark Parrington tells Adam Hyland
As all firefighters will know, the danger from fires is not limited to what they burn, but also the emissions they cause and the effects they have on air quality, and as wildfires increase across the globe, this is a large-scale issue. This past summer saw extreme wildfires across the Northern Hemisphere, with intense hotspots around the Mediterranean basin and in North America and Siberia, with the months of July and August seeing their highest ever global carbon emissions. Observing, monitoring and recording these events requires a bigger, global picture, and this is where the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) comes in, keeping scientific eyes on Earth from above.
CAMS
Implemented by the European Commission with funding from the EU, CAMS, which is a section of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), uses a combination of static and orbiting satellites, as well as strategically placed monitoring stations across the planet, to record and analyse wildfire activity in near-real-time. They measure the heat output or fire radiative power (FRP) of these wildfires, as well as their effect on air quality, and this year report that not only were large parts of the Northern Hemisphere affected during this year’s boreal fire season, but that the number of fires and their persistence and intensity were “remarkable”.
Senior Scientist and wildfire expert at CAMS, Dr Mark Parrington, leads the work on wildfire emissions and their influence on global atmospheric composition, and though his work also includes monitoring pollution events, “wildfires have a huge impact on the atmosphere worldwide, so that still takes up a lot of my time”.
Having completed a PhD on ozone in the stratosphere and a post-doctoral fellowship on air pollution as observed by satellites, he has, in his own words, “come down from the stratosphere to the surface” following research in Canada and then Edinburgh that involved observing forest fires from a plane over the boreal forests of Ontario. “There were always fires in the summer in that area, and it was clear to me that fires were a big part of air pollution. That cemented my interest in fire, that field campaign looking at identifying where there were fires and where there may be more in the next few days, planning a flight path to intercept smoke plumes.
“At CAMS, I spend every day doing something similar, albeit from the ground, looking at the global picture to see where there are fires, what
Senior Scientist and wildfire expert at CAMS, Dr Mark Parrington
the smoke emitted looks like, and highlighting these fires that are taking place in various parts of the world to the global media to show the data and explain what it means.”
This is done by incorporating the near-real-time images of wildfires, the atmospheric chemistry, emissions, and source of a fire into the ECMWF weather forecast model to get a fuller picture and understanding of the composition of the atmosphere at any given time.
“We also take in all of the available satellite observations – temperature, winds, sea surface temperature – as well as data measuring different gases in the air, aerosol and particulate matter, the numbers that represent pollutants throughout the depth of the atmosphere as seen in our 3D model, so we know where it is and where it should be, whether pollutants are near the surface (and therefore a risk to populations) or higher up in the atmosphere.”
OBSERVATION
This data is validated and evaluated against information obtained from global and regional models that include surface measurements from a European Regional Air Quality team and the European Environment Agency, with full reports available to download from the ECMWF website “so that anyone can see how close to the truth we actually are in what we measure and forecast”, Dr Parrington explains.
The satellites that keep an eye on events below are instruments launched by NASA more than 20 years ago, but Dr Parrington says there are contingencies in place so the feed of wildfire data goes uninterrupted. “It’s amazing it has gone so far beyond its expected mission time,” he tells me, “but there are other instruments picking up similar measurements that we are testing in our system with a view towards replacing those original ones when they do disappear.
“We are looking at how we use geostationary satellites in a fixed position that measure the same area throughout the day, rather than those in polar orbit, so we can get hourly coverage and hopefully in the future we will have more timely information available that will have an application in wildfire management on the ground.”
That information doesn’t extend to live coverage, “but we can give the relevant scale, and because we have the relevant data over 20 years, we can also give some context as to how unusual that scale of emissions is for a particular country or region” he explains.
He continues: “You could look at a particular region such as Ireland and identify where any trends in fire locations are occurring, and that can help with better preparation longer term. Very much related to this is being able to show what happens to the smoke and atmospheric pollution, giving you a good illustration and justification for why wildfire fighting is important. It’s not just about a farmer’s field being affected, it can potentially affect thousands of people in towns and cities because of the resulting pollutants. Typically, when this affects population centres is when it hits the news, as we have seen in Canada or California or Australia, and in Europe recently.”
ANALYSIS
CAMS also uses a process called reanalysis that can run over many years and enables it to compare a particular year’s pollution with previous years. “This is useful because it doesn’t just show where fires have occurred, but you can also look at patterns in different pollutants such as PM2.5 or nitrogen dioxide that give a sense of how different areas have been affected by fire pollutants over the course of two decades,” he says.
Dr Parrington adds that the information available and the means by which it is recorded has seen a growth in interest from governments and national agencies interested not just in air pollution but how their services can fight wildfires tactically. In spring 2021, CAMS held a workshop on fire management and fighting applications based on observation data, and he says that those in attendance were a mix of academics and a growing number of people involved in practical wildfire management. “The point of that workshop,” he explains, “was to get the wildland firefighting community together with the Earth observation community and identify where the common ground is, what it is they need from earth observation to improve their operations.”
He also mentions an EU Horizon 2020 project researching how observational data can be translated into useful information for tactical firefighting, while another project in Ireland looked at observation in relation to fire management focusing on peatland fires “and the other types of fires you get in Ireland”.
WILDFIRE GROWTH
The role satellite data can provide is becoming an increasingly important one as large wildfire events continue to grow. Although, as Dr Parrington says, Ireland sees very few truly bad wildfires, this can’t be said of other regions, as recent CAMS reports show.
“The striking thing has been the fires in places that historically haven’t had them as bad before,” he tells me, “such as in Siberia. There have been really big fires within the Arctic Circle in the last couple of years, burning for several weeks at a time, and continuing all the way from June to August. North America saw a similar picture this year.”
The data is alarming. The eastern
The data is alarming. The eastern and central Mediterranean saw prolonged wildfire events this summer, with daily fire intensity reaching new records daily in Turkey, and other countries including Greece, Italy, Albania, North Macedonia, Algeria and Tunisia also suffering badly.
While the Sakha region of Siberia typically experiences wildfire activity every summer, 2021 has been described as “unusual, not just in size but also in the persistence of high-intensity blazes, with a new record for emissions set in August and overall emissions double that of the same period last year.” July was a record month globally in terms of CO2 emissions, with 1258.8 megatonnes released as a result of wildfires. More than half of this carbon dioxide was attributed to fires in North America and Siberia. August saw another 1384.6 megatonnes of CO2 released globally, with Arctic wildfires releasing 66 megatonnes of CO2 between June and August. Estimated CO2 emissions from wildfires in Russia as a whole from June to August amounted to 970 megatonnes.
“It is concerning that drier and hotter regional conditions - brought about by global warming - increase the flammability and fire risk of vegetation,” Dr Parrington concludes. “This has led to very intense and fast-developing fires.
The Fire Year as observed by CAMS
The Weather Room at the European Centre for MediumRange Weather Forecasts
While the local weather conditions play a role in the actual fire behaviour, climate change is helping provide the ideal environments for wildfires.”
With tactical planning to fight wildfire growth becoming increasingly urgent, it is now necessary for governments and national agencies to strategise in order to combat this growing threat, but thanks to CAMS, the vital data needed to observe this spreading danger is available, as their eyes in the air above us gather information that will help those on the ground.
