Monitoring emissions from the 2015 Indonesian fires using CO satellite data

These events convert substantial amounts of carbon stored as peat to atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and significantly affect atmospheric composition on a regional to global scale. During the recent 2015 El Nino event, peat fires led to strong enhancements of carbon monoxide (CO), an air pollutant and well-known tracer for biomass burning.

These enhancements were clearly observed from space by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) and the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) instruments. We use these satellite observations to estimate CO fire emissions within an inverse modelling framework. We find that the derived CO emissions for each sub-region of Indonesia and Papua are substantially different from emission inventories, highlighting uncertainties in bottom-up estimates.