Impact of the summer 2004 Alaska fires on top of the atmosphere clear-sky radiation fluxes

This cooling is somewhat mitigated by the warming effect due to absorbing black carbon aerosols emitted from the fires and to a lesser extent by ozone and other greenhouse gases produced and released from the fires. Sensitivity studies with varying aerosol emission scenarios indicate that the ratio of black to organic carbon aerosol emissions of the boreal fires used in this study needs to be increased considerably to match both observations of aerosol optical depth and TOA radiation fluxes, or the biomass burning aerosols must be considerably more absorbing than parameterized in the model.

While this study cannot resolve the cause of this discrepancy, it presents a powerful methodology to constrain aerosol emissions. This methodology will benefit from future improvements in measurements and modeling techniques.