Fire carbon emission constraints from space-based carbon monoxide retrievals during the 2019 intense burning season in Brazil
- 1Wageningen University & Research (Wageningen, Netherlands)
Abstract
In 2019, Brazil experienced an intensive fire season, despite the absence of major climate anomalies to enhance fire activity. Existing carbon monoxide (CO) emission estimates from state-of-the-art fire emission inventories differ by a factor two for the period and region. We provide a top-down estimate on CO emissions from these fires using the new CarbonTracker Europe – Long-Window/Short-Window (CTE-LW/SW) inverse modelling framework driven by column-averaged dry air CO mole fractions ( X CO ) from the MOPITT and TROPOMI satellite instruments. Our analysis indicates that the 2019 fires in Brazil released approximately 47 TgCO. Although structural atmospheric-chemistry related uncertainties remain (±15 TgCO), the inversions converged strongly to a common posterior (46–48 TgCO) independent of the prior emission inventory (GFED5.1, GFAS v1.2) or assimilated dataset (TROPOMI, MOPITT). Posterior fire emissions closely resemble the newly released GFED5.1, supporting recent advances in bottom-up fire modelling. Nonetheless, at the biome level, our results reveal a systematic underestimation – by roughly a factor of two – in the Cerrado and Caatinga savannas relative to both fire emission priors. While more targeted uncertainty assessments are required, we speculate that this emission gap unlikely stems from inversion choices alone and may indicate an underestimation of fuel loads or emission factors. Overall, we demonstrate CTE-LW/SW effectively leverages X CO to complement existing fire emission monitoring capacities at increasingly fine spatial resolution – a capability that is especially valuable in Brazil, where different fire regimes occur in close proximity and fire activity has intensified in recent years.
Versions
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BibTeX
@article{berg2026fire,
title = {{Fire carbon emission constraints from space-based carbon monoxide retrievals during the 2019 intense burning season in Brazil}},
author = {Anne-Wil van den Berg and Joram J. D. Hooghiem and Auke M. van der Woude and Pieter Rijsdijk and Roland Vernooij and Santiago Botía and Guido R. van der Werf and John B. Miller and Ingrid T. Luijkx and Maarten C. Krol and Wouter Peters},
journal = {Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5194/acp-26-13929-2026},
url = {https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/26/13929/2026/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Fire carbon emission constraints from space-based carbon monoxide retrievals during the 2019 intense burning season in Brazil
AU - Anne-Wil van den Berg
AU - Joram J. D. Hooghiem
AU - Auke M. van der Woude
AU - Pieter Rijsdijk
AU - Roland Vernooij
AU - Santiago Botía
AU - Guido R. van der Werf
AU - John B. Miller
AU - Ingrid T. Luijkx
AU - Maarten C. Krol
AU - Wouter Peters
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
JO - Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
DO - 10.5194/acp-26-13929-2026
UR - https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/26/13929/2026/
AB - In 2019, Brazil experienced an intensive fire season, despite the absence of major climate anomalies to enhance fire activity. Existing carbon monoxide (CO) emission estimates from state-of-the-art fire emission inventories differ by a factor two for the period and region. We provide a top-down estimate on CO emissions from these fires using the new CarbonTracker Europe – Long-Window/Short-Window (CTE-LW/SW) inverse modelling framework driven by column-averaged dry air CO mole fractions ( X CO ) from the MOPITT and TROPOMI satellite instruments. Our analysis indicates that the 2019 fires in Brazil released approximately 47 TgCO. Although structural atmospheric-chemistry related uncertainties remain (±15 TgCO), the inversions converged strongly to a common posterior (46–48 TgCO) independent of the prior emission inventory (GFED5.1, GFAS v1.2) or assimilated dataset (TROPOMI, MOPITT). Posterior fire emissions closely resemble the newly released GFED5.1, supporting recent advances in bottom-up fire modelling. Nonetheless, at the biome level, our results reveal a systematic underestimation – by roughly a factor of two – in the Cerrado and Caatinga savannas relative to both fire emission priors. While more targeted uncertainty assessments are required, we speculate that this emission gap unlikely stems from inversion choices alone and may indicate an underestimation of fuel loads or emission factors. Overall, we demonstrate CTE-LW/SW effectively leverages X CO to complement existing fire emission monitoring capacities at increasingly fine spatial resolution – a capability that is especially valuable in Brazil, where different fire regimes occur in close proximity and fire activity has intensified in recent years.
SN - 1680-7324
ER -