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Published September 28, 2013 | Version Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

El Niño, the 2006 Indonesian peat fires, and the distribution of atmospheric methane

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 2. ROR icon University of Toronto
  • 3. ROR icon University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
  • 4. ROR icon Harvard University
  • 5. ROR icon National Center for Atmospheric Research

Abstract

Dry conditions from a moderate El Niño during the fall of 2006 resulted in enhanced burning in Indonesia with fire emissions of CO approximately 4–6 times larger than the prior year. Here we use new tropospheric methane and CO data from the Aura Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer and new CO profile measurements from the Terra Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) satellite instruments with the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS)‐Chem model to estimate methane emissions of 4.25 ± 0.75 Tg for October–November 2006 from these fires. Errors in convective parameterization in GEOS‐Chem, evaluated by comparing MOPITT and GEOS‐Chem CO profiles, are the primary uncertainty of the emissions estimate. The El Niño related Indonesian fires increased the tropical distribution of atmospheric methane relative to 2005, indicating that tropical biomass burning can compensate for expected decreases in tropical wetland methane emissions from reduced rainfall during El Niño as found in previous studies.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Geophysical Union. Received 8 July 2013; revised 3 September 2013; accepted 6 September 2013; published 18 September 2013. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Work at the University of Toronto was carried out with support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The Mauna Loa data in figure was provided by the NOAA ESRL website. The NCAR MOPITT project is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing System (EOS) Program. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The Editor thanks two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in evaluating this paper.

Attached Files

Published - Worden_et_al-2013-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf

Supplemental Material - readme_forsupportingmaterial.docx

Supplemental Material - supportingmaterial3.docx

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
91265
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20181127-160137074

Funding

NASA/JPL/Caltech
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
NSF

Dates

Created
2018-11-28
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)