Estimating the impact of a 2017 smoke plume on surface climate over northern Canada with a climate model, satellite retrievals, and weather forecasts

In August 2017, a smoke plume from wildfires in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories recirculated and persisted over northern Canada for over two weeks. We compared a full-factorial set of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE simulations of the plume to satellite retrievals of aerosol optical depth and carbon monoxide, finding that ModelE performance was dependent on the model configuration, and more so on the choice of injection height approach, aerosol scheme and biomass burning emissions estimates than to the choice of horizontal winds for nudging. In particular, ModelE simulations with free-tropospheric smoke injection, a mass-based aerosol scheme and high fire NOx emissions led to unrealistically high aerosol optical depth. Using paired simulations with fire emissions excluded, we estimated that for 16 days over an 850 000 km2 region, the smoke decreased planetary boundary layer heights by between 253 m and 547 m, decreased downward shortwave radiation by between 52 Wm-2 and 172 Wm-2, and decreased surface temperature by between 1.5 oC and 4.9 oC, the latter spanning an independent estimate from operational weather forecasts of a 3.7 oC cooling. The strongest surface climate effects were for ModelE configurations with more detailed aerosol microphysics that led to a stronger first indirect effect.