EPS Colloquium - Professor Charles Ichoku, Howard University

Date: 

Monday, April 18, 2022, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Geo Mus 102 (Haller Hall) and Zoom

Talk Titlte:  Wildfires and Climate

Abstract:  Wildfires and other types of biomass burning are a seasonal phenomenon in different land ecosystems around the world. These fires are estimated to consume biomass containing a total of 2-5 petagrams of carbon globally every year, generating heat energy and emitting smoke plumes that comprise different species of aerosols and trace gases. These emissions can have adverse effects on visibility, air quality, and climate. Specifically, although less than 5% of global fires occur in North America, recent studies have shown steady and significant increases in burned areas over the last few decades across the continent, especially in the western US. In this presentation, we will discuss how we characterize fires and aerosols from satellite observations in conjunction with other data to continually improve our understanding of fire distribution in space and time, and how fire energetics are quantified and used to analyze emission source strengths and plume injection characteristics that in turn influence smoke dispersion, transport, and impacts. We will provide a brief survey of fire activities and smoke-aerosol emissions and their radiative forcing effects at global and regional scales, and focus on North American fires, to critically examine the impact of wildland fires and prescribed burns on the environment, air quality, and climate. We will explore the potential for fire and smoke forecasting, and show how synergism in coordinating satellite, airborne, and ground-based observations of fires and smoke can yield vital information for addressing current gaps in our knowledge of wildfires and their overall impacts.

Chales Ichoku Webpage:  https://profiles.howard.edu/profile/53776/charles-ichoku

colloquium_lecture_flier_s22_ichoku.pdf297 KB