Carbon monoxide emissions in summer 2010 in the central part of the Russian Plain and estimation of their uncertainties with the use of different land-cover maps

This study is devoted to estimation of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions during the wildfires of the anomalously hot 2010 summer in the central part of the Russian Plain. CO emissions from the forest wildfires have been estimated with use of the Active Fires (AF) (MODIS MCD14ML) and Burned Areas (BA) (MODIS MCD45) methods for AVHRR/UDM, Global Land Cover 2000 (GLC 2000), GlobCover, and MCD12Q1 vegetation maps. A comparison of the vegetation maps and investigation of forest structure dynamics for the period from 2005 to 2009 have been carried out. It is shown that the major uncertainties during the estimation of CO in decreasing order are the following: distinctions in emission-calculation methods, differences in the vegetation maps used, differences in satellite data from Terra and Aqua, and the insufficient registration of forest structure dynamics. For additional comparison of estimations obtained by an independent method with the use of orbital (MOPITT, AIRS, and IASI) and ground-based (Moscow and Zvenigorod) spectroscopic measurements of CO content were presented.