| NSF Org: |
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 29, 2018 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | January 20, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 1822406 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Jennifer Mercer
jmercer@nsf.gov (703)292-7453 OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2018 |
| End Date: | January 31, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $929,628.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $344,020.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2020 = $0.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
3100 MARINE ST Boulder CO US 80309-0001 (303)492-6221 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
3100 Marine Street, Room 481 Boulder CO US 80303-1058 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | AON-Arctic Observing Network |
| Primary Program Source: |
0100XXXXDB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.078 |
ABSTRACT
Climate warming in the Arctic has been 2-3 greater than in any other environment on Earth. There has been an increase in tundra wildfire occurrences in coastal Greenland in recent years, setting a new all-time record in summer 2017. A growing body of literature suggests that this increase in arctic wildfires is largely due to drier summer conditions from increasing temperatures, increasing length of the snow-cover free season, and increased lightning, all of which are linked to the arctic warming. This project focuses on the study of emissions from arctic tundra wildfires. Chemical tracers of wildfires, including carbon monoxide, methane, and a series of volatile organic compounds will be monitored in the atmosphere at the Greenland Environmental Observatory at Summit (GEOSummit), which, while considered one of the most pristine and remote locations in the Northern Hemisphere, has previously been shown to receive fire plumes from coastal Greenland and other arctic regions further away. Observations will be applied in modeling research to assess the impacts of the increasing frequency and geographical extent of fires on the arctic environment and lower latitudes.
This project will deliver continuous high time resolution data for wildfire emission and climate forcing atmospheric constituents at GEOSummit. All data will be submitted to the Arctic Data Center for worldwide dissemination. Data analyses and modeling will improve assessments of fire emissions and their environmental and climate impacts. Results and interpretations will be presented in university class room teaching, seminars, at conferences, and in peer-reviewed journal publications. Observations will make a pivotal contribution to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) program. This research will also contribute to the following programs: Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH), Cryosphere and Atmospheric Chemistry (CATCH), Pollution in the Arctic: Climate, Environment and Societies (PACES), and the international Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP). It addresses the need for ?long-term atmospheric measurements?, as stipulated in the Report on the Future of Atmospheric Chemistry Research to NSF.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Wildfires occur throughout the northern latitudes, and their emissions can impact the atmospheric composition and climate in the Arctic. There has been an unprecedented increase in tundra wildfire occurrences in coastal Greenland in recent years, setting a new all-time record in summer 2017.
This Arctic Observing Network (AON) project focused on the study of Arctic wildfires through continuous observations of atmospheric fire tracers, such as methane, carbon monoxide, and many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including ethane, ethene, methylchloride, acetonitrile, propane, iso-butane, n-butane, iso-pentane, n-pentane, benzene, toluene at the Greenland Environmental Observatory at Summit (GEOSummit). For this project, we deployed key instrumentation at GEOSummit to measure these trace gases continuously over several years, from 2018 through 2021. We developed and demonstrated the capability for automated data reduction, calibration, and near real-time plotting of atmospheric trace gas concentrations from a remote arctic research station. This effort produced a unique, long-term record of information available for use for multiple applications and contributes to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) methane, carbon monoxide, and VOC programs. The data have been archived and are publicly available for further analyses and uses.
During the course of the project, we developed software tools to analyze the collected measurements, with the goal of identifying specific pollutant sources including when the site was impacted by a fire plume. Despite the success of the software development activities, the identification of fire plumes proved challenging, due to the GEOSummit location and the infrequency that it was impacted by plumes.
The measurements enabled a long-term analysis of ethane and propane concentrations. Changes in these concentrations were observed, including a pause in concentration increases from 2015 – 2018, and an upturn in 2019. These observations were consistent with measurements made at other northern latitude sites. The results suggest that biomass burning as well as oil and gas production activities were the drivers of these changes; however, more work is needed to better constrain regional and global estimates of emissions from these and other sources.
To improve estimates of the emissions from biomass burning, work to develop the next version of the Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN) continued, and emission estimates from this model are publicly available.
Results have been presented and published in peer-reviewed publications. For this project, we trained several students and early-career scientists.
Due to unexpected circumstances, including the COVID pandemic, instrumentation challenges and lack of site access, and personnel changes, the program was terminated early.
Last Modified: 05/19/2022
Modified by: Christine Wiedinmyer
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