{"id":1679,"date":"2023-02-23T21:57:55","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T21:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/?page_id=1679"},"modified":"2023-03-31T22:53:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T22:53:58","slug":"wildfire-emissions-processing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/research\/wildfire-emissions-processing","title":{"rendered":"Wildfire emissions and processing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wildfires emit particles and reactive trace gases which significantly impact tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry, air quality, climate, and human health on regional and global scales. The particles can be 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter (PM<sub>2.5<\/sub>), which are small enough to enter our lungs, and can either absorb or scatter sunlight depending on its composition. Some important reactive gases that wildfires emit are hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NO<sub>x<\/sub> = NO + NO<sub>2<\/sub>), as they are important precursors of air pollutants ozone (O<sub>3<\/sub>) and particulate matter (PM). In a warmer and drier climate, wildfires are predicted to be more frequent and more intense, and thus will continue to grow in importance in the future.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1517\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1517\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1517\" src=\"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wildfire_WECAN-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Wildfire viewed from the cockpit of the C-130 plane\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wildfire_WECAN-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wildfire_WECAN-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wildfire_WECAN-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1517\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wildfire viewed from the cockpit of the C-130 plane<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Thornton group studies wildfires through (1) in situ (on site) and remote observations, (2) laboratory experiments, and (3) modeling. The most recent projects supporting wildfire research were the WE-CAN and FIREX-AQ field campaigns, the MOONLIGHT laboratory experiment, and the Australian wildfire season of 2019\u20132020. During WE-CAN and FIREX-AQ, the high-resolution time-of-flight chemical ionization mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-CIMS) flew through wildfire smoke to detect oxygenated gases. During MOONLIGHT, with an inlet that switches between gas-phase and particle-phase sampling, the HR-ToF-CIMS characterized the products of aromatic chemistry within a laboratory chamber. Finally, a study of the Australian wildfire season of 2019\u20132020 related satellite measurements of reactive nitrogen-containing gases to satellite-derived fire radiative power.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1580\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1580\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1580\" src=\"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image2-1024x768.jpeg\" alt=\"Laboratory experiment simulating wildfire chemistry\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image2-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image2-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image2-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/image2.jpeg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1580\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Laboratory experiment simulating wildfire chemistry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the Thornton group, our research has been focused on describing fire plume evolution in the particle phase and the gas phase as well as characterizing the importance of nitrous acid (HONO) as an emission and for chemical evolution in the plume.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1732\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1732\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1732\" src=\"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Research_Wildfires-300x281.jpg\" alt=\"Schematic of wildfire smoke particle evolution\" width=\"300\" height=\"281\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Research_Wildfires-300x281.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Research_Wildfires-768x720.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Research_Wildfires-1024x960.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/Research_Wildfires.jpg 1190w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1732\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Schematic of wildfire smoke particle evolution<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wildfires emit particles and reactive trace gases which significantly impact tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry, air quality, climate, and human health on regional and global scales. The particles can be 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter (PM2.5), which are small enough to enter our lungs, and can either absorb or scatter sunlight depending on its composition. Some important reactive gases that wildfires emit are hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2), as they are important precursors of air pollutants ozone (O3) and particulate matter (PM). In a warmer and <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1679","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1679\/revisions\/1733"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atmos.washington.edu\/~thornton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}