The Chisholm firestorm: observed microstructure, precipitation and lightning activity of a pyro-cumulonimbus

International audienceA fire storm that occurred on 28 May 2001 and devastated the town of Chisholm, ~150 km north of Edmonton, Alberta, induced a violent fire-invigorated cumulonimbus cloud. This pyro-cumulonimbus (pyro-Cb) had overshooting tops of 2.5?3 km above the tropopause, and injected massive amounts of smoke into the lower stratosphere. Fortunately, this event occurred under good coverage of radar, rain gauge, lightning and satellite measurements, which allowed in-depth documentation of the event, and gave us an opportunity to study the cloud top morphology and microstructure, precipitation and cloud electrification of the pyro-Cb. The combination of heat and smoke created a cloud with extremely small drops, which ascended rapidly in violent updrafts. There appeared to be little freezing up to the homogeneous freezing isotherm level of ?38°C. A cloud with such small and short-lived highly supercooled drops is incapable of producing precipitation except for few large graupel and hail, which produced the observed radar echoes and charged the cloud with positive lightning. The small cloud drops froze homogeneously to equally small ice particles, for which there is no mechanism to aggregate into precipitation particles, and which hence remain in the anvil. The lack of significant precipitation implies that only a small fraction of the smoke is scavenged, so that most of it is exhausted through the anvil to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. Comparisons with other cases suggest that a pyro-Cb does not have to be as violent as the Chisholm case for precipitation to be strongly suppressed. However, this level of convective vigor is necessary to create the overshooting updraft that injects the smoke into the lower stratosphere

Small-scale mixing processes enhancing troposphere-to-stratosphere transport by pyro-cumulonimbus storms

Deep convection induced by large forest fires is an efficient mechanism for transport of aerosol particles and trace gases into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UT/LS). For many pyro-cumulonimbus clouds (pyroCbs) as well as other cases of severe convection without fire forcing, radiometric observations of cloud tops in the thermal infrared (IR) reveal characteristic structures, featuring a region of relatively high brightness temperatures (warm center) surrounded by a U-shaped region of low brightness temperatures. We performed a numerical simulation of a specific case study of pyroCb using a non-hydrostatic cloud resolving model with a two-moment cloud microphysics parameterization and a prognostic turbulence scheme. The model is able to reproduce the thermal IR structure as observed from satellite radiometry. Our findings establish a close link between the observed temperature pattern and small-scale mixing processes atop and downwind of the overshooting dome of the pyroCb. Such small-scale mixing processes are strongly enhanced by the formation and breaking of a stationary gravity wave induced by the overshoot. They are found to increase the stratospheric penetration of the smoke by up to almost 30 K and thus are of major significance for irreversible transport of forest fire smoke into the lower stratosphere

Data augmentation for machine learning of chemical process flowsheets

Artificial intelligence has great potential for accelerating the design and engineering of chemical processes. Recently, we have shown that transformer-based language models can learn to auto-complete chemical process flowsheets using the SFILES 2.0 string notation. Also, we showed that language translation models can be used to translate Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs) into Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs). However, artificial intelligence methods require big data and flowsheet data is currently limited. To mitigate this challenge of limited data, we propose a new data augmentation methodology for flowsheet data that is represented in the SFILES 2.0 notation. We show that the proposed data augmentation improves the performance of artificial intelligence-based process design models. In our case study flowsheet data augmentation improved the prediction uncertainty of the flowsheet autocompletion model by 14.7%. In the future, our flowsheet data augmentation can be used for other machine learning algorithms on chemical process flowsheets that are based on SFILES notation.Comment: Submitted to PROCEEDINGS OF THE 33rd European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering (ESCAPE33), June 18-21, 2023, Athens, Greec

The Chisholm firestorm: observed microstructure, precipitation and lightning activity of a pyro-Cb

International audienceA fire storm that occured on 28 May 2001 devastated the town of Chisholm, ~150 km north of Edmonton, Alberta, induced a violent fire-invigorated cumulonimbus cloud. This pyro-cumulonimbus (pyro-Cb) had overshooting tops of 2.5?3 km above the tropopause, and injected massive amounts of smoke into the lower stratosphere. Fortunately, this event occurred under good coverage of radar, rain gauge, lightning and satellite measurements, which allowed in-depth documentation of the event. The combination of heat and smoke created a cloud with extremely small drops, which ascended rapidly in violent updrafts. There appeared to be little freezing up to the homogeneous freezing isotherm level of ?38°C. A cloud with such small and short-lived highly supercooled drops is incapable of producing precipitation except for few large graupel and hail, which produced the observed radar echoes and charged the cloud with positive lightning. The small cloud drops froze homogeneously to equally small ice particles, for which there is no mechanism to aggregate into precipitation particles that hence remain in the anvil. The small precipitation efficiency implies that only a small fraction of the smoke is scavenged, so that most of it is exhausted through the anvil to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. Comparisons with other cases suggest that a pyro-Cb does not have to be as violent as the Chisholm case to have strongly suppressed precipitation. However, this level of convective vigor is necessary to create the overshooting updraft that injects the smoke into the lower stratosphere

Carbon lock-in through capital stock inertia associated with weak near-term climate policies

Stringent long-term climate targets necessitate a limit on cumulative emissions in this century for which sufficient policy signals are lacking. Using nine energy-economy models, we explore how policies pursued during the next two decades impact long-term transformation pathways towards stringent long-term climate targets. Less stringent near-term policies (i.e., those with larger emissions) consume more of the long-term cumulative emissions budget in the 2010-2030 period, which increases the likelihood of overshooting the budget and the urgency of reducing GHG emissions after 2030. Furthermore, the larger near-term GHG emissions associated with less stringent policies are generated primarily by additional coal-based electricity generation. Therefore, to be successful in meeting the long-term target despite near-term emissions reductions that are weaker than those implied by cost-optimal mitigation pathways, models must prematurely retire significant coal capacity while rapidly ramping up low-carbon technologies between 2030 and 2050 and remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere in the latter half of the century. While increased energy efficiency lowers mitigation costs considerably, even with weak near-term policies, it does not substantially reduce the short-term reliance on coal electricity. However, increased energy efficiency does allow the energy system more flexibility in mitigating emissions and, thus, facilitates the post-2030 transition

Modeling of biomass smoke injection into the lower stratosphere by a large forest fire (Part I): reference simulation

Wildland fires in boreal regions have the potential to initiate deep convection, so-called pyro-convection, due to their release of sensible heat. Under favorable atmospheric conditions, large fires can result in pyro-convection that transports the emissions into the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere. Here, we present three-dimensional model simulations of the injection of fire emissions into the lower stratosphere by pyro-convection. These model simulations are constrained and evaluated with observations obtained from the Chisholm fire in Alberta, Canada, in 2001. The active tracer high resolution atmospheric model (ATHAM) is initialized with observations obtained by radiosonde. Information on the fire forcing is obtained from ground-based observations of the mass and moisture of the burned fuel. Based on radar observations, the pyro-convection reached an altitude of about 13 km, well above the tropopause, which was located at about 11.2 km. The model simulation yields a similarly strong convection with an overshoot of the convection above the tropopause. The main outflow from the pyro-convection occurs at about 10.6 km, but a significant fraction (about 8%) of the emitted mass of the smoke aerosol is transported above the tropopause. In contrast to regular convection, the region with maximum updraft velocity in the pyro-convection is located close to the surface above the fire. This results in high updraft velocities >10 m s^−1 at cloud base. The temperature anomaly in the plume decreases rapidly with height from values above 50 K at the fire to about 5 K at about 3000 m above the fire. While the sensible heat released from the fire is responsible for the initiation of convection in the model, the release of latent heat from condensation and freezing dominates the overall energy budget. Emissions of water vapor from the fire do not significantly contribute to the energy budget of the convection

Reactions of (-)-sparteine with alkali metal HMDS complexes : conventional meets the unconventional

Conventional (-)-sparteine adducts of lithium and sodium 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexamethyldisilazide (HMDS) were prepared and characterised, along with an unexpected and unconventional hydroxyl-incorporated sodium sodiate, [(-)-sparteine·Na(-HMDS)Na·(-)-sparteine]+[Na4(-HMDS)4(OH)]--the complex anion of which is the first inverse crown ether anion

Locked into Copenhagen pledges - Implications of short-term emission targets for the cost and feasibility of long-term climate goals

This paper provides an overview of the AMPERE modeling comparison project with focus on the implications of near-term policies for the costs and attainability of long-term climate objectives. Nine modeling teams participated in the project to explore the consequences of global emissions following the proposed policy stringency of the national pledges from the Copenhagen Accord and Cancun Agreements to 2030. Specific features compared to earlier assessments are the explicit consideration of near-term 2030 emission targets as well as the systematic sensitivity analysis for the availability and potential of mitigation technologies. Our estimates show that a 2030 mitigation effort comparable to the pledges would result in a further "lock-in" of the energy system into fossil fuels and thus impede the required energy transformation to reach low greenhouse-gas stabilization levels (450 ppm CO2e). Major implications include significant increases in mitigation costs, increased risk that low stabilization targets become unattainable, and reduced chances of staying below the proposed temperature change target of 2 degrees C in case of overshoot. With respect to technologies, we find that following the pledge pathways to 2030 would narrow policy choices, and increases the risks that some currently optional technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) or the large-scale deployment of bioenergy, will become "a must" by 2030