An evaluation of advanced baseline imager fire radiative power based wildfire emissions using carbon monoxide observed by the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument across the conterminous United States

Abstract

Abstract Biomass-burning emissions (BBE) profoundly affect climate and air quality. BBE have been estimated using various methods, including satellite-based fire radiative power (FRP). However, BBE estimates show very large variability and the accuracy of emissions estimation is poorly understood due to the lack of good reference data. We evaluated fire emissions estimated using FRP from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-R) by comparing with the Sentinel 5 Precursor TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) Carbon Monoxide (CO) over 41 wildfires across the United States during July 2018—October 2019. All the ABI FRP-based CO and TROPOMI CO emissions were significantly correlated and showed a very good agreement with a coefficient of determination of 0.94 and an accuracy of 13–18%. We further reported a CO emission coefficient of 29.92 ± 2.39 g MJ−1 based on ABI FRP and TROPOMI CO, which can be used to directly estimate BBE from FRP observed from satellites. Based on the CO emission coefficient and ABI FRP, we finally estimated a monthly mean CO of 596 Gg across the Conterminous United States for June—September 2018.