The USDA Forest Service Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana is a unique facility where biomass burning emissions can be studied in a controlled environment. Fuels characteristic of biomass burning in different regions, such as western U.S. forests, grasslands or agricultural fuels, are ignited underneath a large stack equipped with sampling ports for chemical instrumentation.
In 2016, NOAA led a large-scale study with an extensive instrumentation suite at this laboratory to produce arguably the most detailed investigation of biomass burning emissions to date. Our group fielded the Airborne Cavity Enhanced Spectrometer (ACES) to measure emission factors for glyoxal and methylglyoxal, together with NO2and HONO.
Selected Papers
Zarzana, K.J., V. Selimovic, A.R. Koss, K. Sekimoto, M.M. Coggon, B. Yuan, W.P. Dubé, R.J. Yokelson, C. Warneke, J.A. de Gouw, J.M. Roberts, and S.S. Brown, Primary emissions of glyoxal and methylglyoxal from laboratory measurements of open biomass burning. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 2018. 18(20): p. 15451-15470. https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/18/15451/2018/