MOPITT detection of carbon monoxide emitted from biomass burning: a case study

The EOS Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) is the first free-flying instrument for global measurement of carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere from space. Because biomass burning is one of the major sources of CO to the atmosphere, the capacity of MOPITT to detect CO released from biomass burning is important and is the subject of this investigation. A study area with a series of fire events in the year 2000 in the northwest United States is selected. Fire data, detected with Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) from the satellite, were acquired and processed to spatially and temporally match the CO data. It is found that the increase of CO in the atmosphere is closely related to burning area and density in the study area. It appears that MOPITT can detect the CO increase due to biomass burning in a forested area when the fire size is over 40 km², i.e. 8% of a MOPITT pixel.