the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Long-term observations of black carbon and carbon monoxide in the Poker Flat Research Range, central Alaska, with a focus on forest wildfire emissions
Abstract. Forest wildfires in interior Alaska represent an important black carbon (BC) source for the Arctic and sub-Arctic. However, BC observations in interior Alaska have not been sufficient to constrain the range of existing emissions. Here, we show our observations of BC mass concentrations and carbon monoxide (CO) mixing ratios in the Poker Flat Research Range (65.12° N, 147.43° W), located in central Alaska, since April 2016. The medians of the hourly BC mass concentration and CO mixing ratio throughout the observation period were 13 ng m-3 and 124.7 ppb, respectively. Significant peaks in the BC mass concentration and CO mixing ratio were observed at the same time, indicating influences from common sources. These BC peaks coincided with peaks at other comparative sites in Alaska, indicating large BC emissions in interior Alaska. Source estimation by FLEXPART-WRF confirmed a contribution of forest wildfires in Alaska when high BC mass concentrations were observed. For these cases, we found a positive correlation (r = 0.44) between the observed BC/∆CO ratio and fire radiative power (FRP) observed in Alaska and Canada. This finding indicates that the BC and CO emission ratio is controlled by the intensity and time progress of forest wildfires and suggests the BC emission factor or/and inventory could be potentially improved by FRP. We recommend that FRP be integrated into future bottom-up emission inventories to achieve a better understanding of the dynamics of pollutants from frequently occurred forest wildfires under the rapidly changing climate in the Arctic.
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CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-2764', Jian Liu, 11 Jan 2024
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The authors have conducted a lot of analysis work in this paper, demonstrating a new way to help people understand the emissions over Arctic. There are some issues : 1) There are several models mentioned in this paper, as we know, models are impacted from the model itself, parameters, and input, such as emissions, so how did you find a balance between the models and their uncertainties, any assumptions included? If yes, more details should be given in the supplement. 2) FRP has widely been utilized in the top-down emission inventories, but for bottom-up emission researchers, the burned area and emission factors are used to estimate the biomass burning emission. Of course, the FRP should have some correlations with wildfires and these are acknowledged as two different technique routes for emission researchers. So the question here is how to help these researchers use the FRP or help each other, the authors should give accurate details in this part. If not, the conclusion will be weak. The authors should also make it clear that this might be useful to the bottom-up emissions in the results section. 3) Following Question 2), based on this recently published paper (https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-367-2024), why did the authors choose GFED only as the emission inventory in the FLEXPART-WRF, how about using an FRP-based emission inventory and checking if there was some relation between BC/△CO and the differences for two different routes' emission inventories? 4) In Fig. S2, there are some very high values from ground-based observations but not shown by NOAA hourly-average observations, does that mean the authors has a different data curation method from NOAA, if yes, why? 5) Some minor revisions should be corrected, e.g. Line 81, "section 3.2" should be "Section 3.2" and so on. Lines 405, and 416, the references should include the DOI link, and other similar issues in the reference part.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2764-CC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on CC1', Takeshi Kinase, 29 Mar 2024
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The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2764/egusphere-2023-2764-AC1-supplement.pdf
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CC2: 'Reply on AC1', Jian Liu, 23 Apr 2024
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I appreciate your replies, which help me understand deeply your work. Wish you a success in the following submission.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2764-CC2
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CC2: 'Reply on AC1', Jian Liu, 23 Apr 2024
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AC1: 'Reply on CC1', Takeshi Kinase, 29 Mar 2024
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