Climate and air quality impacts of boreal forest fires

Our consortium (led by Prof. Annele Virtanen) included people from UEF Aerosol Physics Group, UEF Aerosol physics, chemistry and toxicology research unit (ILMARI), UEF Biogeochemistry group and FMI (Kuopio), got the 4-year research grant (Climate and air quality impacts of boreal forest fires (BoFF, total budget 1.2M eur) from Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation.

In this project, we will use a comprehensive approach to define the emission factors (EFs, the grams of a compound emitted per kg of dry biomass burned) for greenhouse gases and relevant aerosol species. We will investigate the mechanisms behind the emissions using field and laboratory measurements. Finally, by utilizing and implementing this new knowledge to global and regional atmospheric models, we will quantify the climate and air quality impact of the smoke emitted by surface fires from boreal forests.