Observations of Siberian Forest Fire Aerosol in the Stratosphere

Stratospheric aerosol is an important climate-forming factor and plays an important role in many atmospheric physicochemical processes. Accordingly, the study of the sources of this aerosol is an essential aspect of stratosphere research.

It is currently known that volcanic eruptions make a significant contribution to the aerosol filling of the stratosphere. Emissions from aircraft engines were considered as a source of soot aerosol in the stratosphere. With the development of high-tech satellite observation systems, it was discovered that soot aerosol particles can also penetrate into the stratosphere due to the formation of powerful pyrocumulus clouds that occur in areas of extensive forest fires. Cases of pyrocumulus emissions into the stratosphere have been recorded in Canada, United States and Australia. 

The report will present the results of the study  of the soot aerosol transfer from forest fires in Eastern Siberia in the stratosphere of the Northern Hemisphere in 2019 [1] and 2022 and the localization of places and times of  powerful pyrocumulus clouds formation using  data from the ground-based stratospheric lidar station at the Institute of Atmospheric Optics SB RAS in Tomsk, the CALIOP space lidar on the CALIPSO satellite, VIIRS radiometers on the Suomi-NPP satellite, as well as cloud top brightness temperature data and visual observations from the Japanese Himawari-8 satellite and the results of trajectory analysis using GDAS wind speed data.

In early summer 2019, a powerful eruption of Raikoke volcano occurred, which complicated the interpretation of the observation results, since it significantly filled the stratosphere with volcanic aerosol. Fires and volcanic eruption are alternative hypotheses for the sources of aerosol filling of the stratosphere in July-August 2019. To identify the origin of the aerosol, a comprehensive method was developed using ground-based and satellite atmospheric observation systems. 
1. A. A. Cheremisin, V. N. Marichev, D. A. Bochkovskii, P. V. Novikov and I. I. Romanchenko. Stratospheric Aerosol of Siberian Forest Fires According to Lidar Observations in Tomsk in August 2019 // Atmospheric and Oceanic Optics, 2022, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 57–64.