EGU25-14573, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-14573
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Intense transport of smoke to the Central Andes: Insights from a unique set of instruments located in the Bolivian Andean Cordillera
Marcos Andrade1,2, Laura Ticona1, Fernando Velarde1, Decker Guzman1, Luis Blacutt1, Ricardo Forno1, Rene Gutierrez1, Isabel Moreno1, Fabricio Avila1, Gaelle Uzu3,4, Philippe Goloub5, Michel Ramonet6, Olivier Laurent6, Alfred Wiedensohler7, Kay Weinhold7, Radovan Krejci8, Diego Aliaga8,1, David Whiteman9, and Paolo Laj10,11,12
Marcos Andrade et al.
  • 1Laboratory for Atmospheric Physics, Physics Research Institute, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia
  • 2Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
  • 3Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP, 38400 Grenoble, France
  • 4Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, IGE, 460 rue de la Piscine, 38400 Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France
  • 5Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8518 - LOA - Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique, F-59000 Lille, France
  • 6Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, Université Paris-Saclay, France
  • 7Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
  • 8Department of Environmental Science and Bolin Centre of Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm 10691, Sweden
  • 9Howard University, Washington, DC USA
  • 10Univ. Grenoble-Alpes, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble-INP, IGE, 38000 Grenoble, France
  • 11Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Research Council of Italy, Bologna, Italy
  • 12Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

In 2024, Bolivia experienced the worst year of fires since 2002, when Aqua MODIS began collecting data. According to estimates, more than 15 million hectares were burned this year. A sunphotometer sitting in the Bolivian lowlands recorded AOD values higher than two for several continuous days indicating the degradation of the air quality in the region. A unique set of instruments located in the Bolivian Andes recorded the transport of smoke produced by this biomass burning. Very high values of atmospheric tracers like carbon monoxide, equivalent black carbon, and others have been measured as high as 5240 m asl  at the Chacaltaya GAW station (CHC, 16.35ºS, 68.13ºW, 5240 m asl) and other sites around it both in the Altiplano and adjacent high altitude valleys. Although transport to these sites was observed previously, usually the events lasted one or two days. However, in 2024 longer periods of consecutive days with smoke arriving from the lowlands were observed for a second year in a row. Similar high values were observed in CHC in October of 2023, a year with less than half of fires in the country. The conditions that led to the transport of smoke to the mountains in the Andean Cordillera will be discussed, as well as the possible effects of the associated deforestation in terms of water availability for the central Andes.

How to cite: Andrade, M., Ticona, L., Velarde, F., Guzman, D., Blacutt, L., Forno, R., Gutierrez, R., Moreno, I., Avila, F., Uzu, G., Goloub, P., Ramonet, M., Laurent, O., Wiedensohler, A., Weinhold, K., Krejci, R., Aliaga, D., Whiteman, D., and Laj, P.: Intense transport of smoke to the Central Andes: Insights from a unique set of instruments located in the Bolivian Andean Cordillera, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-14573, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-14573, 2025.