Global Simulations Suggest Biomass Burning Aerosol Emissions From Grassland Fires Could Be Important Ice Nucleating Particles
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Ice nucleating particles (INP) capable of nucleating ice crystals via immersion freezing at temperatures above approximately −35°C may strongly influence cloud glaciation, with implications for global precipitation and climate feedback. In addition to mineral dust, soil dust, and marine organics, laboratory and field measurements suggest biomass burning aerosols (BBA) can act as immersion‐mode INP between around −30°C and −15°C. However, the contribution of BBA to the global INP budget remains poorly understood due to poor knowledge of which fuels yield INPs, uncertainties in global coverage of those fuels, and unknown size distributions of the INPs in the BBA. Nonetheless, with some understanding of these uncertainties from sensitivity studies, the relative importance of ice nucleation activity of BBA compared to other INP sources can be quantified. In this work, we investigate the potential global importance of BBA as INP using a global aerosol‐climate model, specifically the UK Met Office Unified Model (UM). We evaluate the model using field campaign data sets. We examine potential uncertainties in fuel types and particle sizes on BBA‐based INP concentrations. Averaged over June–September between 15°S and 50°S, BBA is a more important INP than dust and marine INP about 30% of the time at altitudes with temperatures between −30°C and −20°C. Our simulations therefore suggest BBA INPs may be at least as important as mineral dust and marine INP over the atmospheric regions and seasons where grassland fires are frequent.
DOI: 10.1029/2025jd043647
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,070
Awards: Track 4: Advanced CI Coordination Ecosystem: Monitoring and Measurement Services, G3226045097, Track 1: ACCESS Resource Allocations Marketplace and Platform Services (RAMPS), ACO: An Open CI Ecosystem to Advance Scientific Discovery (OpenCI), Track 3: COre National Ecosystem for CyberinfrasTructure (CONECT), POTENTIALLY LARGE CONTRIBUTION OF BIOMASS-BURNING AEROSOL TO GLOBAL ICE NUCLEATING PARTICLE CONCENTRATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR AEROSOL LIFECYCLE AND CLOUD MICROPHYSICS, Category I: Bridges-2: Scalable Converged Computing, Data, and Analytics for Rapidly Evolving Science and Engineering Research, Track 2: Customized Multi-tier Assistance, Training, and Computational Help (MATCH) for End User ACCESS to CI
OpenAlex ID: W4416593530