Event Date: 13 Jul 2015 04:00 AM - 13 Jul 2015 05:00 AM

Event Venue: Tower Building, Level 2, CREATE Theatrette

SMART-CENSAM Public Lecture

Biomass burning aerosols in Southeast Asia - emission, transport and impacts

by Dr. Hsiang-He LEE

Seminar Abstract
Biomass burning activities in Southeast Asia have become a major concern of general public as well as governments in the region.  This is because that aerosols emitted from such fires can cause long-lasting haze events under favorite weather conditions in downwind locations such as megacities including Singapore, degrading air quality and causing human health issues.  On the other hand, biomass-burning aerosols may influence convective clouds in the Maritime Continent, though such cases have not been well understood.  

In order to improve our understanding of the spatiotemporal coverage and influence of biomass burning aerosols in Southeast Asia, we have used the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model driven by the biomass burning emissions from the Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN) version 1.5.  To attribute the aerosol influences over various target regions to specific fire locations, we have also partitioned (i.e., “colored”) aerosols from five major fire regions of Southeast Asia into different prognostic variables in the simulations.  

Based on a multi-year simulation, we have examined the influences of various meteorological regimes on the aerosol transport and wet removal.  We find the transport and scavenging of biomass burning aerosols are strongly modulated by the Southeast Asian monsoon wind field and precipitation.

Speaker’s Biography
Hsiang-He’s research interests are Southeast Asia biomass burning, air pollution, aerosol-cloud interaction, radiation and climate. Hsiang-He achieved her PhD from University of California, Davis in 2014. As a post-doctoral associate at SMART, she works with Chien Wang (MIT) team.

Her research at UC Davis focused on the impact of aerosol-cloud-radiation interaction on California weathers, which include fog formation and winter storm precipitation. Recently, her research field extends to regional and global climate. Due to her research interests, she also develops new aerosol modules to study aerosol-cloud interaction in Weather Research and Forecasting chemistry model (WRF-Chem) and Community Earth System Model (CESM).