Black Carbon in Marine Particulates in the Gulf of Maine.

[NNadir]

I'm cleaning up some old computer files of papers I've collected and came across an interesting one that discusses the distribution of soot from biomass burning and the burning of dangerous fossil fuels in Maine.

The paper I to which I will briefly refer is this one: Marine Chemistry 113 (2009) 172–181. The paper's title is: "Black carbon in marine particulate organic carbon: Inputs and cycling of highly
recalcitrant organic carbon in the Gulf of Maine."

Here's an excerpt from the opening paragraphs:

Black carbon (BC), the soot and char formed during incomplete combustion of fossil and biomass fuels, is ubiquitous (e.g., Goldberg, 1985; Masiello, 2004; Park et al., 2003; Schmidt and Noack, 2000; Suman et al., 1997). Upon its emission to the atmosphere, BC influences cloud droplet nucleation (Kaufman and Fraser, 1997) and absorbs solar radiation, thereby affecting the temperature and water content of both the atmosphere and the ground underneath (Jacobson, 2004, Kaufman and Fraser, 1997). It has been suggested that these effects have caused floods and droughts in recent years in China and India (Menon et al., 2002). In addition, BC has been characterized as carcinogenic and a cause of problems such as asthma (Dockery et al., 1993; Künzli et al., 2000). Perhaps such impacts are not surprising since we know that BC is an important carrier of organic pollutants like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (Lohmann et al., 2005; Neff, 1979).Seiler and Crutzen (1980) noted the potential implications of combustion processes to the global carbon cycle. BC formed during biomass and fossil fuel burning is relatively inert to biological and chemical processes and thus may be resistant to decomposition over geological time scales (Middleburg et al., 1999). As a result, BC formed during vegetation fires and wood burning transfers materials from a fast cycling biosphere (more labile organic carbon) into a long-term geological carbon cycle (a more refractory organic carbon). A fraction of the BC emitted into the atmosphere is initially incorporated into soils (Eglintonet al., 2002; Schmidt and Noack, 2000), but erosion processes appear to transport some of this BC down rivers to the ocean (Mannino and Harvey2004; Masiello and Druffel, 2001; Mitra et al., 2002). Other studies suggest that BC may constitute an important fraction of organic carbon in contemporary marine sediments (Gustafsson and Gschwend, 1998), where it can be preserved for thousands of years (Masiello and Druffel, 1998; Middleburg et al., 1999). BC emissions have increased over the last century and are estimated to be between 6 and24 Tg BC/yr. for fossil fuels(Hendricks et al., 2004; Penner et al.,1993, Reddy and Boucher, 2004) and50 to 270 Tg BC/yr. for biomass fuels …

There's a lot of very cool analytical chemistry in the paper, not that I'd bore anyone with it. I personally was fascinated to read how black carbon flux affects a disequilbrium between natural ²³⁸U and its daughter ²³⁴Th in seawater, but that would be nuclear chemistry and we know from experience that many people hate nuclear science because they don't know any.

If you're in to this sort of thing, and happen to be in a library that subscribes to Marine Chemistry check it out. It's a fun read.

Anyway, the results of the paper were rather interesting in determining the ratio of dangerous fossil fuel soot to biomass burning soot in the Gulf of Maine:

…The importance of biomass burning appears reasonable for this region. Energy use data from the Energy Information Administration(http://www.eia.doe.gov/), combined with a technology based emission factor approach (Bond et al., 2004), suggests that within New England 30% of the soot BC (b1 μm) is produced from biofuel or biomass combustion, while 70% comes from petroleum, coal, and natural gas combustion (Flores-Cervantes, 2008a). Moreover, in the summer of2004, large plumes of smoke deriving from intense boreal forest fires were observed in the GoM during August of 2004 (e.g. Val Martin et al., 2006; Quinn et al., 2006). Long distance transport selects for smaller, soot-like BC particles formed during biomass/biofuel combustion (Garstang et al., 1997). Therefore, our August/September cruise samples (Fig. 3) may have been especially affected by distant forest fires.

If you happen to be traveling in Maine or anywhere else in New England and you're, um, concerned about biomass related black carbon ending up ensconced in your lung tissue, don't be.

Biomass burning is so called "renewable energy" and thus it's good for you, whether it results in lung cancer or not.

Have a nice day tomorrow.