ИСТИНА

Biomass burning produces a large amount of smoke and is responsible for a large fraction of black carbon (BC) in the atmosphere, affecting air quality, the earth’s radiation budget, and aerosol/cloud interactions. Black carbon (BC) in combustion aerosols is of critical importance among other climate-active species, and may cause significant temperature changes through both their direct and indirect impacts on clouds ( Yun et al, 2013). Wildland fires supply a major source of light-absorbing aerosol on a national and global scale. Russian boreal forest occupies near 700 million ha, which is mostly dominated by Siberian coniferous forest. Satellite observations show an area of 10–14 million ha is burned annually in Siberia (Conard and Ivanova, 1997). Siberian wildfires are found to be a major source of climate-relevant species emitted at northern latitudes. Siberia shares 50% of the world emissions in the Arctic north of 600N which strongly pollute Europe, Canada, and China. Special concern is directed on wildfires which degrade the Arctic air quality due to long-range transport of smoke plumes which approach the Siberian Arctic coast (Paris et al., 2009). Seasonal cropland burning activities in Siberia may double BC and organic aerosol emissions (Warneke et al., 2010), and cause pronounced pollution events of "Arctic smoke" (Stock et al., 2012). BC at high latitudes has an amplifying effect on climate, decreasing Arctic snow albedo when it falls out of the atmosphere, thereby accelerating snowmelt. There is a large uncertainty in global models related to the amount of BC transported to high latitudes and deposited on snow (Zhou et al., 2012). In Russia, despite the large area covered by wildfires, information about BC emissions, long-range transport to the Arctic, and climate impacts is sparse. Observations and prescribed burns were performed in a few places in Western and North-Eastern Siberia (Paris et al.,2009; Samsonov et al., 2012), but there is a limited number of BC measurements at Russian Arctic stations. In this situation, the modeling of wildfire/seasonal burning emissions and their transport to the Arctic, is an important research priority.