High altitude smoke in the NASA GISS GCM

High altitude smoke-plumes from large, explosive fires were discovered in the late 1990sThey can now be observed with unprecedented detail from space-borne instruments with high vertical resolution in the UTLS such as CALIOP, MLS and ACE. These events inject large quantities of pollutants into a relatively clean and dry environment They serve as unique natural experiments with which to understand, using chemical transport and composition-climate models, the chemical and radiative impacts of long-lived biomass burning emissions. We are currently studying the Black Saturday bushfires in Australia during February 2009