CALIPSO-Derived Wildfire Plume Injection Height Statistics: Comparing Version 3 and Version 4 Data from CALIOP

Biomass burning has implications on the atmosphere and climate. Understanding biomass burning plume injection height is important because plumes can alter albedo and precipitation patterns through cloud interactions, as well adversely affect air quality and impact human health. For example, black carbon from fire could impact the climate system following deposition on ice/snow, facilitating a positive feedback through changes in albedo that could result in enhanced melting that could further raise sea levels. If plume injection height and detrainment are incorrect, then the transport of these pollutants will be incorrectly forecasted and modeled. In this work, plume injection height is derived using data from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), which is onboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder (CALIPSO) satellite, with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) thermal anomaly data for fire detection. The Langley Trajectory Model (LaTM), and NOAA’s Hazard Mapping System (HMS) were used to extract data from specific fires to develop and expand accuracy within scientific and aerosol models and products. The goal is to define the discrepancies between two different cases: an older process using manually extracted aerosol Version 3 (V3) data, and a quicker case using an automated process with Version 4 (V4) data. Both datasets are from CALIOP and were extracted for specific fires from the LaTM. The data was analyzed both visually and statistically by evaluating contrasts in variables at specific grid points within burn scars in ArcGIS and by quantifying any apparent differences through statistical methods. Because plume injection height can influence air quality and climate, understanding the characteristics of these different methods can improve modeling techniques in the future to plan for future events and how to combat them.