A Collection of Airborne Measurements and Analyses of Trace Gases Emitted From Multiple Fires in California

Biomass burning is an important source of trace gases and particles, and can influence air quality on local, regional, and global scales. With the threat of wildfire events increasing due to changes in land use, increasing population, and climate change, the importance of characterizing wildfire emissions is vital. In this work we characterize trace gas emissions from 12 wildfires and 1 prescribed fire in California between 2013 and 2017, in some cases with multiple measurements performed during different burn periods of a specific fire. Airborne measurements of carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, formaldehyde, water vapor, temperature, and three-dimensional winds were made by the Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment and have been published at NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center (https://doi.org/10.5067/ASDC/AJAX/wildfire, Iraci et al., 2021). The majority of these measurements were made as close as possible to each fire and represent fresh emissions from known fire sources. This set of observations from 13 different fires offers the opportunity to explore trace gas emissions over a range of meteorology, fire conditions, and to a lesser extent, vegetation type and drought, and adds to the body of knowledge collected by other investigators and field campaigns. Plain Language Summary Biomass burning is an important source of trace gases and particles which can influence air quality on local, regional, and global scales. This set of airborne observations of trace pollutants and winds from 13 different fires broadens the range of fire types and conditions for which observations have been made near the top of visible smoke plumes. Calibrated and quality-controlled observations of methane, formaldehyde, ozone, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and 3-D winds near to a variety of active fires offer the opportunity to explore emissions over a range of meteorology, fire conditions, and to a lesser extent, vegetation type, and drought. This data set can also be an asset for bridging the gap of knowledge between models and in situ data collected by other investigators and field campaigns.