Fifty-three participants from 15 countries gathered in July 2018 in Boulder, Colorado, for the Fourth IBBI Workshop.  Biomass burning occurs on every continent except Antarctica. As well as changing the land surface, it releases large amounts of trace gases and aerosols to the atmosphere that play important roles in atmospheric chemistry and climate. However, there is large uncertainty on how climate change and global change will impact the frequency, intensity, duration, and location of biomass burning in the short- and long-term, making their emissions a large source of uncertainty in future atmospheric composition.

In the U.S., there are currently several research campaigns underway to study the impact of fires on the atmosphere. They include integrated laboratory, field, and modeling activities, with the following major field activities taking place in 2018 and 2019 funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Scientific Foundation (NSF), and the Joint Fire Science Program Project, respectively.

• Fire Influence on Regional and Global Environments Experiment (FIREX )
• FIREChem
• Western wildfire Experiment for Cloud chemistry, Aerosol absorption and Nitrogen (WE-CAN)
• Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE)

 At the same time, operational global fire observation capabilities are currently being greatly improved with the series of Sentinel satellite launches by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the geostationary GOES-R and Himawari-8 satellites launched by the U.S. and Japan, respectively. Furthermore, ESA is developing a stable long-term time series of fire observations in its Climate Change Initiative.

The aim of the workshop was to capitalize on the U.S. research campaigns in the global and operational contexts. The workshop brought together the international biomass burning research community to discuss how to leverage the efforts in the U.S. and Europe to improve scientific research and understanding of open biomass burning around the world and maximize the benefits from the new satellite instrumentation. 

The workshop took place over two days and included plenary talks, breakout groups, and plenary discussions. The workshop opened with welcomes and introductory presentations from the host institution and sponsors of the workshop, including David Fahey from NOAA who discussed a newspaper article from the same day describing current fires raging in California and British Columbia. Alexander Baklanov from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) announced the publication of Vegetation Fire and Smoke Pollution Warning and Advisory System (VFSP-WAS): Concept Note and Expert Recommendations , which was the outcome from the 2016 Fourth IBBI Workshop reported in IGACnews Issue 58.

Other plenary sessions included descriptions of the 2018/19 U.S. field campaigns, the challenges of forecasting and modelling biomass burning, where forecasting systems from Europe, Australia, the US and Singapore were described, and fire products available from satellites. On the second day, after a plenary session in which the ACCORD project and selected non-US based activities were described, a World Café-style break out session was carried out. In this session participants circulated between tables, and discussed: (1) How the outcomes of the U.S. Field Campaigns can be transferred beyond the U.S. and into the Future; (2) How the U.S. Field Campaign can serve to verify and enhance satellite products; (3) How the U.S. Field Campaigns, satellite products, and non-U.S. activities can address the challenges of forecasting and modelling biomass burning; and (4) How the U.S. Field Campaigns can help to meet the goals and needs of biomass burning research outside the U.S.. Two themes emerged repeatedly amongst a wealth of ideas:

1. The U.S. Field Campaigns should link the smoke plume properties to fire characteristics like flaming versus smoldering fire type, temperature and radiative fire power (FRP), in order to make their results applicable to large-scale satellite observation analysis for smoke forecasting. This is also highly relevant in view of the strong fire temperature-dependence of the smoke composition that has been observed during the BBOP campaign. It may, however require an additional aircraft dedicated to the observation of the evolution of the fire(s) that emit(s) an observed smoke plume.
2. Developing programs for visiting scientist from outside the U.S. to observe aircraft experiment activities directly from the campaign bases was expected to be most effective in making results and know-how from the U.S. campaigns accessible to scientific groups worldwide. In particular, this would likely have a long-lasting effect by initiating research collaborations for years to come.

Other suggestions included ensuring the products and information are discoverable and usable to the international community, expanding the scope of U.S. campaigns, e.g. adding fuel types from outside the US such as peat and Eucalypt to laboratory burning experiments, and building capacity by developing “best practice” guidelines based on the U.S. Field Campaigns.

IBBI is currently developing follow-up activities to implement the themes that emerged from this workshop.

Last Modified: 07/30/2018
Modified by: Megan L Melamed