Study Shines Light on Mysterious ‘Brown Carbon’ While Over a Dozen Western Fires Fume

Funding is not the only thing up in the air when it comes to wildfires.  A new study led by Carnegie Mellon University with scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Montana focuses on brown carbon, a major component of smoke from wildfires.  It is well known that black carbon, or soot, has a significant impact on global warming.  Wildfires account for one-third of Earth’s black carbon.  While black carbon consists solely of carbon molecules, brown carbon contains a number of organic materials that make it hard to identify and model.  Brown carbon has a similar atmospheric warming impact as black carbon, but its prevalence and warming efficiency as evident in wildfire smoke is less known.

The study found that the amount of brown carbon coming from a wildfire didn’t depend so much on what was being burned but rather corresponded with the amount of black carbon present in the smoke.  This in turn relies on the burning style of the fire, such as the size of the flames or the duration of smoldering.

“Experimentalists have known about the existence of brown carbon for a while, but its “brownness”, which dictates its warming effect has not been well understood,” Rawad Saleh, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon and lead author of the study, told ThinkProgress.

Study Shines Light on Mysterious ‘Brown Carbon’ While Over a Dozen Western Fires Fume