Some trace gas emissions from North American biomass fires with an assessment of regional and global fluxes from biomass burning

Emission factors for several trace gases were determined using airborne measurements from 13 biomass fires in North America. Emissions of methane (CH₄), nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHC), hydrogen (H₂) and ammonia (NH₃) were found to be positively correlated with the ratio of carbon monoxide (CO) to carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission factors, both within each fire and between fires. This indicate that these four species are produced predominantly when combustion is inefficient. In addition, a new method is outlined for estimating fluxes of CH₄, NMHC, H₂ and NH₃ from global biomass burning. The annual emissions of these four species from worldwide biomass burning are determined by this method to be 39, 17, 21 and 4.5 Tg yr^-1m, respectively. Our results indicate that the worldwide emissions of CH₄, NMHC, H₂ and NH₃ from biomass burning represent 8%, 17%, 24% and 7%, respectively, of the total global emissions of these four species. -from Authors