How much carbon and aerosols are released during Santa Ana fires?

Emissions of carbon and aerosols from fires (UCI)

Regional scale fire emissions of carbon and aerosols will be derived using the GFED model (Van de Werf et al. 2006; Randerson et al. 2007). We will use the burned areas from the comprehensive fire history data (http://frap.cdf.ca.gov/projects/fire_data/fire_perimeters/) (FRAP 2008), which represents the most complete digital record of fire perimeters in California. This GIS layer compiled large fire history, generally 300-acre minimum for CDF fires since 1950 and 10-acre minimum for USFS wildland forest fires since 1910, but many smaller fires as well. It includes the date of burning, calculated acreage, cause of fire (including lightning, camp fire, power line), and reporting agency. The combustion completeness will be derived from Landsat data back to 1984 using the algorithm described in section 3.1.2. We will use the Carnegie- Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) biogeochemical model to estimate fuel loads using time varying inputs of precipitation, temperature, solar radiation, and satellite-derived fractional absorbed photosynthetically active radiation that we have compiled for an ongoing project in California. The emission factors are from Andreae and Merlet (2001). We will validate our estimate of carbon loss with field measured carbon losses for large recent burns.