Estimates of Global Biomass Burning Emissions using Fire Radiative Power Retrieved from Multiple Geostationary Satellites

Biomass burning significantly affects air quality and climate change. Current estimates of burning emissions from different algorithms vary markedly. This paper investigates the use of fire radiative power (FRP) to derive emissions. The FRP is retrieved using WF_ABBA_V65 (Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm) from multiple geostationary satellites. The network of satellites consist of two Geostationary Operation Environmental Satellites (GOES) which are operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA),the Meteosat Second Generation satellites (MET-09) operated by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and the Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT-1R) operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). The instantaneous FRP may not be continuously observed from theses satellites because of sensor saturation, cloud cover, and background surface effects. To fill the missing observations, we use a set of representative diurnal patterns of half-hourly FRP for various ecosystems that are based on climatology derived from several years of data. Combined with the observed instantaneous FRP values within a day, the representative patterns are used to fill the missed and poor quality observations of half-hourly FRP for individual fire pixels. To calculate the biomass combusted during fire activities, on the other hand, the relationship between FRP and biomass combustion is established using biomass combustions in 700 Landsat TM-based burn scars. These biomass combustions are quantified using burn severity detected from Landsat TM data and fuel loadings in individual burn scars. The algorithms are applied to estimate global biomass burning emissions every half hour in near real time. Preliminary results of the global geostationary satellite emissions will be presented.