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Abstract

Significant uncertainties are incurred in deriving various quantities related to biomass burning from satellite measurements at different scales, and, in general, the coarser the resolution of observation the larger the uncertainty. Uncertainties associated with satellite measurements can vary widely because fires occur in different ecosystems at various scales under a diversity of conditions. This chapter investigates uncertainties associated with the satellite characterization of biomass burning, as they relate to the derived geophysical products such as smoke constituents and their applications. It explores how the observation uncertainties can propagate when used in deriving smoke emissions as well as in regional modeling. Typically, the uncertainties tend to increase as the spatial and temporal resolutions of the satellite observations decrease. Although such uncertainties affect fire measurements and modeling everywhere, the northern sub-Saharan African (NSSA) region has been used as a case study to evaluate the effect of emissions uncertainty on aerosol estimates for this study.