Interannual and seasonal variability of biomass burning emissions constrained by satellite observations

We present a methodology for estimating the seasonal and interannual variation of biomass burning designed for use in global chemical transport models. The average seasonal variation is estimated from 4 years of fire‐count data from the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) and 1–2 years of similar data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) World Fire Atlases. We use the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Aerosol Index (AI) data product as a surrogate to estimate interannual variability in biomass burning for six regions: Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia, Brazil, Central America and Mexico, Canada and Alaska, and Asiatic Russia. The AI data set is available from 1979 to the…