A study of the Effects of Siberian Wildfires on Ozone Concentrations over East Asia in Spring 2003

시베리아 산불이 2003년 봄철 동아시아 오존 농도에 끼치는 영향 연구

Global climate warming induced by long-lived greenhouse gases is expected to cause increases in wildfire frequencies and intensity in boreal forest regions of mid- and high-latitudes in the future. Siberian forest fires are one of important sources for air pollutants such as ozone and aerosols over East Asia. Thus an accurate quantification of forest fire influences on air quality is crucial, in particular considering its higher occurrences expected under the future warming climate conditions. We here use the 3-D global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) with the satellite constrained fire emissions to quantify Siberian fire effects on ozone concentrations in East Asia. Our focus is mainly on spring 2003 when the largest fires occurred over Siberia in the past decade. We first evaluated the model by comparing to the EANET observations. The model reproduced observed ozone concentrations in spring 2003 with the high $R^2$ of 0.77 but slightly underestimated by 20%. Enhancements in seasonal mean ozone concentrations were estimated from the difference in simulations with and without Siberian fires and amounted up to 24 ppbv over Siberia. Effects of Siberian fires also resulted in 3-10 ppbv incresases in Korea and Japan. These increases account for about 5-15% of the ozone air quality standard of 60 ppbv in Korea, indicating a significant effect of Siberian fires on ozone concentrations. We found however that possible changes in regional meteorology due to Siberian fires may also affect air quality. Further study on the interaction between regional air quality and meteorology is necessary in the future.