The impacts of biomass-burning aerosols on air quality, weather and renewable energy in British Columbia

In the last few years, wildfires’ have become more severe and frequent in British Columbia, Canada. In addition to the direct dangers of flames, threatening wildlife and human society, as well as vital infrastructures, wildfire plumes laden with Biomass-burning (BB) aerosols can adversely affect air quality, weather, and renewable energy generation on a large scale. BB aerosols can disrupt solar radiation, thus disturbing the surface energy budget, atmospheric stability, and cloud evolution.
The proposed international research will study the plume’s dynamics and its interplay with the atmosphere through an exhaustive computational campaign to shed more light on the mentioned impacts and enhance the Canadian’s analyzing and forecasting capability to address them.
For that purpose, an intern will be trained in ICON (ICOsahedral Nonhydrostatic), a high-resolution numerical weather forecasting model, at KIT, particularly its Aerosol and Reactive Trace gases(ART) module. The intern will then set up the model on SFU’s supercomputer upon his return and exercise the acquired knowledge on analyzing large-scale forest fires emissions.

Faculty Supervisor:

Vahid Hosseini

Student:

Partner:

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Education

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: