Airborne Measurements of NO2, HONO, and HCHO Emissions from Canadian Wildfires and the Oil Industry

In August 2023 and September 2024, King’s College London (KCL) conducted airborne campaigns in Canada to investigate emissions from wildfires and the oil industry. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) Twin Otter aircraft was equipped with an array of in-situ and remote sensing instruments, including the SWING instrument. Developed by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), SWING is a compact whiskbroom imager designed to map trace gases that absorb in the UV-visible spectral range (300-550 nm).

We present the integration of SWING into the BAS Twin Otter and its operations during the airborne campaigns. On 14 and 19 August 2023, the aircraft sampled the plume from a wildfire in Ontario, measuring NO2. On 11 September 2024, the aircraft flew over a fire in Saskatchewan, where we detected NO2 together with HCHO and HONO. In the same 2024 campaign, we observed NO2 emissions from flaring at oil facilities in Alberta: Fort McMurray, Fort McKay, and from chemical plants near Edmonton. These airborne measurements are compared with satellite-based air quality data from TROPOMI and TEMPO, for which we are close to the northern edge of the field of view. We also estimate the HONO/NO2 from the fire and investigate how such measurements may help to quantify the emissions from wildfires and from natural gas flaring.