Modeling the emission and transport of CO2 from Amazonia burning areas

Each year in the tropics an estimated 1.8-4.7 Pg of carbon are released to the atmosphere by biomass fires [Crutzen and Andreae,1990]. This value can be compared with annual aerosol emission in Tropical America, 2.2 Pg [Penner, Ghan et al, 1991]. Globally,biomass burning has now been recognized as a major source of CO2(carbon dioxide), important trace gases and aerosol particles to the atmosphere [Hao et al., 1990].

Regionally, in the dry season biomass burning areas in Central Brazil and Amazonia significantly contribute to carbon dioxide input into atmosphere.

To estimate the balance of carbon dioxide for this season the numerical experiments with the transport model have been performed. The emission of carbon dioxide was estimated with using distribution of fire centers and their areas.

The transport model has been designed on the basis of semi-Lagrangian technique and includes the numerical procedures for the interpolation and the calculation of the air particle displacement. The quasi-monotone local spline interpolation is used [Bermejo and Staniforth, 1992]. The model has property to conserve the carbon dioxide mass without sources. The conservative algorithm has been designed by using ideas from flux corrected transport (FCT) method [Priestley, 1993].

For the simulation of the carbon dioxide transport the wind, temperature, geopotential height, and vertical turbulence parameters fields from the 40-km grid-increment version of the CPTEC-INPE Eta Model were used.