Evaluation of the immediate impact of the 2025 Korean wildfires on the air quality over South Korea based on satellite and reanalysis data analyses
Abstract
Based on the combination of multiple satellite and reanalysis data, we conducted the evaluation of unprecedented large wildfires in South Korea during March 2025. This wildfire event was quite enormous for changing the climatology of Korean wildfire properties in recent 20 years. In spite of moderate performance, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the sensor of low-earth orbit satellite, did not perfectly capture the smoke plume from this event. When we utilized the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), however, we clearly detected the plume generation having high aerosol density, revealing that the geostationary satellite sensor enables to play a role of the biomass burning monitoring better. Additionally, we could see the enhancement of carbon monoxide even around ~ 10 km altitude over the wildfire area using the measurement of limb-viewing satellite (Microwave Limb Sounder, MLS), implying the potential impact of burning event to the upper tropospheric chemistry. We also found that multiple reanalysis data can detect the region that smoke plume affects during this wildfire event of March 2025, but also confirmed the necessity to improve reanalysis data quality especially for the spatial resolution. This study can be a useful reference for showing how to use the existed satellite and reanalysis dataset when the urgent diagnosis of atmospheric change is needed related to the occurrence of wildfire events.
Citation Information
@article{dongheelee2026,
title={Evaluation of the immediate impact of the 2025 Korean wildfires on the air quality over South Korea based on satellite and reanalysis data analyses},
author={Donghee Lee and Juhee Lee and Sangjun Kim and Jhoon Kim and Min Ju Yeo and Jeong-Ah Yu and Hyunkwang Lim and Hwan-Jin Song and Ja-Ho Koo},
journal={Pure and Applied Geophysics},
year={2026},
doi={https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8958347/v1}
}
SinoXiv