Long-term variations in PM2.5 emission from open biomass burning in Northeast Asia derived from satellite-derived data for 2000-2013

PM2.5 emissions from open biomass burning (BB) in Northeast Asia (NEA: China, Mongolia, Korea, and Japan) during 2000-2013 were estimated using satellite-derived data (GFASv1.0 and GFED3). The annual mean BB PM2.5 emission in NEA during the study period was 660 Gg yr−1, in which considerable inter-annual variability was observed. In general, PM2.5 emissions in NEA were the highest in spring (Mar.-May), likely due to the burning of crop residues and forest fire. The contribution of PM2.5 from open BB in Northeast Asia was less than 10% of the anthropogenic PM2.5 emission, except in Mongolia, wherein BB emission was the predominant source of PM2.5. Although the emissions calculated by GFASv1.0 were significantly higher than GFED3 by a factor of 2.66 (Mongolia) to 10.9 (South Korea) due to difficulty in small fire detection by GFED3, they generally showed consistent temporal variation on average. In general, statistically significant long-term trends of open BB PM2.5 emissions were not observed in NEA, except in South Korea.