26SATMET Global Biomass Burning Emissions Product for Operational Air Quality Forecasting

Biomass burning from wildfires releases a large amount of aerosol and trace gases into the atmosphere. Their long-distance transport significantly affects both regional and global air quality that has strong impacts on human health and environment. In support of the National Weather Service operational air quality forecasting capability, we generate an operational daily global biomass burning emissions product extended (GBBEPx) for CH₄, CO₂, CO, SO₂, OC, BC, PM_2.5, NO_x, and NH₃. The GBBEPx is produced by blending Fire Radiative Power (FRP) measured from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on Terra and Aqua satellites based on the algorithm of NASA Quick Fire Emission Dataset (QFED). Because the MODIS is approaching its end of life, an algorithm is developed to produce GBBEPx from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites. To do this, we first calculated fire radiative power (FRP) from 3.9 µm I-band (375 m pixel) VIIRS active fire detections in each 0.05° grid cell with a correction of cloud cover on a daily basis. The daily VIIRS FRP from 2020-2021 was correlated to QFED emissions for different ecoregions in individual continents. The established statistical regression parameters are applied to estimate biomass burning emissions separately from each VIIRS instrument on JPSS satellites. The final GBBEPx is produced by blending emissions from each VIIRS estimation. In supporting various air quality modeling systems operated at NOAA, emissions are aggregated to a set of grid sizes that are 0.1°×0.1°, 0.25°×0.2135°, FV3 C384, and FV3 C96 grids. Daily GBBEPx emissions for the recent Alberta and Canadian fires in May and June 2023 will be presented to discuss the anomalously high emissions compared to a climatology of emissions from the last two decades, also generated using the same GBBEPx algorithm.