Assessing the Impact of African Emissions on Tropical Atmospheric Composition

Atmospheric emissions from the tropics have a global influence. Africa’s landmass coversboth hemispheres from north of 30oN to south of 30oS, with much of Africa’s pollution emitted within 15o of the equator. Over 40% of global biomass burning carbon monoxide (CO) emissions are attributed to African emissions. African biomass burning activities take place during the dry seasons – late November to early March in the northern hemisphere (NH), and July to October in the southern hemispheric (SH) part of Africa. Africa is experiencing rapid economic and population growth and anthropogenic activity may surpass biomass burning as the largest pollution source by 2030.

During the Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom), we sampled outflow flow from Africa over the Atlantic ocean across four seasons. We see a strong seasonal cycle in CO emissions to the Atlantic basin. We use a Lagrangian Particle Dispersion model to calculate the surface influence for these observations and evaluate the highly uncertain emissions inventories for a variety of trace gases measured during ATom.