Biomass burning is widespread across the tropics and is used to clear forests to develop agricultural land and is a commonly used farming practice to return nutrient to the soil at the end of the growing season. Wholescale burning of land across South America and Africa delivers large loadings of particulate matter into the atmosphere each year. This particulate matter, which contains large amount of black carbon which absorbs sunlight, plays an important role in altering the radiative balance of the atmosphere across these regions. Further, these large particulate loadings have significant impacts on human health when they advect over urban areas the number and size of which are increasing rapidly in tropical and sub-tropical areas.
This talk will introduce several major experimental aircraft studies across the tropics carried out during the biomass burning season over South America and Africa. It will explore the characteristics of the aerosol and its regional distribution. Differences in the properties of biomass burning aerosol in regions dominated by deforestation fires and those resulting from agricultural burning will be highlighted and the changes in these practises over the last deacde discussed. The regional influence of biomass burning on air quality and its influence on regional radiation, clouds and precipitation will be presented.