Characterizing Fire Emissions and Aging Using New VOC Retrievals from the CrIS Sensors

Fire emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) drive production of particulate matter and ozone, with major human health impacts. Field campaigns can provide valuable snapshots to understand emission mechanisms and in-plume chemistry, but sustained global VOC observations are needed to quantify these processes at scale and to diagnose temporal changes. However, existing VOC observations are sparse and often ill-suited for testing and advancing models. The proposed work will change this landscape by applying a suite of new space-based VOC retrievals from the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) to better understand fire emissions and their atmospheric impacts. VOCs targeted in this project include key biomass burning emissions as well as tracers of the ensuing oxidative processing.