Estimation of the aerosol optical thickness distribution in the Northeast Asian forest fire episode in May 2003: Possible missing emissions

During the study of the enhancement of aerosol optical thickness (AOT) which was derived by Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for an active forest fire episode in Northeast Asia for May 2003 (In et al., 2009), it was found that CMAQ underestimated and overestimated AOT sporadically compared to the multiple satellite observations. Based on the AERONET surface AOT observation result, the WMO Global Telecommunications System (GTS) SYNOP system smoke/fire reports, and surface aerosol concentration data in Korea, it was found that these errors were resulted from missing of biomass burning emissions and coarse aerosols originating from soil. An inconsistency between surface observed and CMAQ estimate AOT and MODIS hot spot detects was found, which suggests that accuracy of MODIS fire products needs to be assessed in East Russian, China, and Korea in order to utilize them for national scale fire management in the region. The implement of origin and transport process of wind blown dust in current CMAQ is necessary to extend CMAQ capability in Northeast Asia.