Master thesis at NILU/University of Oslo – Tracking Wildfire Smoke: Combining Space Observations with Atmospheric Transport Models

Are you interested in a Master thesis at UiO ? Check out the following page: Tracking Wildfire Smoke: Combining Space Observations with Atmospheric Transport Models – Department of Geosciences

In 2025, Canada experienced exceptionally intense wildfires, producing massive smoke plumes that were repeatedly transported across the Atlantic and observed over Europe. These long-range transported aerosol layers are of societal concern because they can degrade air quality and affect human health, influence clouds, and perturb the Earth’s radiation budget, thereby impacting climate. An ongoing master’s thesis examines transport pathways and aerosol aging related to the Canadian wildfires. The figure shows the modeled aerosol concentrations (upper two panels) and the satellite-derived aerosol extinction (third panel) and type classification (lowest panel) for a satellite overpass on June 4, 2025.
Courtesy: Irene Karlsen, NILU/NMBU.


Exceptional high AOD over Svalbard in Summer 2019: A multi-instrumental approach

In the summer of 2019, the Arctic region registered exceptionally high aerosol optical depth (AOD) values over Svalbard, linked to intense biomass burning and volcanic activity across the Northern Hemisphere. See our recent Preprint EGU Sphere.

Herrero-Anta, S., Eckhardt, S., Evangeliou, N., Gilardoni, S., Graßl, S., Heslin-Rees, D., Kazadzis, S., Kouremeti, N., Krejci, R., Mateos, D., Mazzola, M., Ritter, C., Román, R., Stebel, K., and Zielinski, T.: Exceptional high AOD over Svalbard in Summer 2019: A multi-instrumental approach, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3423, 2025.