Fire

Global Change Seminar

Little fires and tangled system

Tami Bond

·      Fire

·      Aerosol and climate

·      Little fire

·      Tagled system 1 and 2

I was very intrigue to find out what this seminar is about because as a Geology student, who has little previous exposure of fire, Fore is just fire, never have I thought that fire is actually a very  important element to be investigated. In Tami Bond seminar about fire, she structured her talk into introduction to fire; human control on fire, effects of aerosol on the amount of sunlight reaching earth and effect of changes in energy balance. 

 Particles cool the earth, unless they absorb high amount of light. From black carbon and organic carbon fire can be made.Orange: black carbon, e.g. candle. Blowing the calendar resulting in organic carbon, candle that has no flame and reaction to consume the fuel, will escape to the atmosphere. Black carbon, molecule with plate like structure allows it to absorb almost every light at various wavelength. Black carbon resulted in immediate warming. Contamination of strong radiative force will affect the lifetime of the black carbon existence in the atmosphere thus affecting the environment

   As important as the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that will affect the global warming. Climate effects, health effects can occur as well due to significant type of aerosol which is colour related.

·     Human input to ‘fire’

·      Activity x emission factor = emission rate

·      Emission inventories collect all possible activities which later sorted out by exactly how the fuel get burns, economic consideration and technology available in controlling the ‘fire’

·      Identifying the source of fire that cause pollution by black carbon, surprising result apparently the activity that produced most black carbon is that of 10kw small household stove while industrial power plant produces almost none of the black carbon

·      Little fires were remote and not measured and very fluctuating

Tangled system 1(stove)

·      Effort: to measure remote sources of the little fires

·      Result; stove produce higher value of black carbon than the laboratory

·      Identifying problem: equipment to measure real time fire

·      Optimizing stove design to reduce the influx of black carbon emission

·      Probability distribution function: various scattering of the rest of particles, but the black particles have matched; limited black sources

Fuel leaving system

Tangled system2(vehicles)

Ø  Particles = pickup trucks

Ø  Born and die

Ø  Need to wait for them to die off

Ø  Particulate matter emission come from vehicles

§  Transition of using train from trucks as the train are more energy efficient (for delivery)

§  Prediction of emission using the fleet model

§  Final prediction: impact of emission

§  Reduced form model for mortality (consider emission location)

§  Forcing per emission for climate forcing (all emission)

§  To do by 2050; changing the future 

§  Carbon tax reduces all impacts by pushing freight to more efficient rail

§  Ensure engines are durable (no super emitters)

§  Compact development does not change much in the overall freight system

§  Same activity, less production

Below are some of the research by Tami Bond and his team on the subject of interest.

A laboratory comparison of the global warming impact of five major types of biomass cooking stoves

Evolution of anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions of air pollutants at global and regional scales during the 1980–2010 period

Light absorption of organic aerosol from pyrolysis of corn stalk 

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6th February 2019