Smoke self-lofting towards the lower stratosphere: an alternative process to pyroCb-lofting

Wildfire smoke is known as a highly absorptive aerosol type in the shortwave wavelength range. The absorption of Sun light by optically thick smoke layers results in heating of the ambient air. This heating is translated into self-lofting of the smoke up to more than 1 km in altitude per day. The main goal is to demonstrate that radiative heating of intense smoke plumes is capable of lofting them from the lower and middle free troposphere (injection heights) up to the tropopause without the need of pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) convection. The further subsequent ascent within the lower stratosphere (caused by self-lofting) is already well documented in the literature. Simulations of heating rates which are then converted into lofting rates are conducted by using the ECRAD (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Radiation) scheme. As input parameters thermodynamic profiles from CAMS (Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service) reanalysis data, aerosol profiles from ground-based lidar observations, radiosonde potential temperature profiles, CALIOP (Cloud Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) aerosol measurements, and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) aerosol optical depth retrievals were used. The sensitivity analysis revealed that the lofting rate strongly depends on aerosol optical thickness (AOT), layer thickness, layer height, and black carbon (BC) fraction. We also looked at the influence of different meteorological parameters such as cloudiness, relative humidity, and potential temperature gradient. Lofting processes in the stratosphere observed with CALIOP after major pyroCb events (Canadian fires, 2017, Australian fires 2019-2020) are compared with simulations to demonstrate the applicability of our self-lofting model. We analyzed long-term CALIOP observations of Siberian smoke layers and plumes evolving in the troposphere and UTLS (upper troposphere and lower stratosphere) region over Siberia and the adjacent Arctic during the summer season of 2019 and found several indications (fingerprints) that self-lofting contributed to the vertical transport of smoke. We hypothesize that the formation of a near-tropopause aerosol layer, observed with CALIOP over several months, was the result of self-lofting processes because this is in line with the self-lofting simulations. We will show a detailed analysis of tropospheric and stratospheric smoke lofting rates based on simulations and observations.