Impact of wildfire emissions of PM2.5 and Black Carbon in southern Italy

The climate change induced-events are affecting the Mediterranean Sea through ever-increasing frequent and severe heatwaves and droughts, which are primary drivers for wildfires diffusion. This study aims to comprehensively investigate the wildfires' impact on emissions of PM2.5 and Black Carbon during fire seasons in southern Italy.  As a first step, the Lagrangian transport of emissions produced by wildfires and impacting two National Parks of the Calabria region, placed in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, was estimated for a particularly severe fire season. PM2.5 and Black Carbon observations were taken from the Sila National Park at the Monte Curcio Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) regional station and the Aspromonte National Park at the Mammola rural-regional background station. These observations were integrated with remote-sensing fire detections and the high-resolution WRF-HYSPLIT back-trajectories, which improved the model accuracy in the orographically complex region of Calabria. Moreover, we evaluated the wildfire impact on human health in terms of passively smoked cigarettes (PSC), related to PM2.5 and Black carbon measurements. Finally, we estimated the PM2.5 and Black Carbon emissions released during the whole analyzed fire season and assessed the uncertainties of remote sensing-based inventories by comparing the temporal and spatial behavior of the last version of the satellite-based Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4s) with the more accurate ground-based wildfire emissions inventory produced by ISPRA (Institute for Environmental Protection and Research).