Boreal forest fire monitoring by GNSS, referring to the 2011 BORTAS experiment

During 2010 and 2011, BORTAS (Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites) experiment has been carried out over northern America and Canada with the aim of studying the air masses which contain emission products from boreal wildfires [1]. In this study, the goal is to understand the potential of ground-based GNSS sensors in monitoring fire plumes. In relatively stable weather condition, strong correlation between GNSS-ZTD (Zenith Total Delay) and PM (Particulate Matter) can be found [2]; reflecting ZHD (Zenith Hydrostatic Delay) the delay caused by the standard dry atmosphere, the delay caused by PM is included in ZWD (Zenith Wet Delay) [3]. Referring to the 2011 BORTAS experiment, data from GNSS ground-based sensors located in the plume trajectories have been analysed. To evaluate the GNSS approach sensitivity, fresh plumes, aged plumes, and background plumes have been studied considering different flights.

 

[1] Palmer, P. I., Parrington, M., Lee, J. D., Lewis, A. C., Rickard, A. R., Bernath, P. F., ... & Young, J. C. (2013). Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites (BORTAS) experiment: design, execution and science overview. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 13(13), 6239-6261.

[2] Guo, M., Zhang, H., & Xia, P. (2020). A method for predicting short‐time changes in fine particulate matter (PM2. 5) mass concentration based on the global navigation satellite system zenith tropospheric delay. Meteorological Applications, 27(1), e1866.

[3] Guo, J., Hou, R., Zhou, M., Jin, X., Li, C., Liu, X., & Gao, H. (2021). Monitoring 2019 forest fires in southeastern australia with GNSS technique. Remote sensing, 13(3), 386.