Studying Iraqi Fire Pollution

Studying Iraqi Fire Pollution

 

Beyond its massive human and financial cost, the ongoing war in Iraq has also had an impact on the environment. Recently, UMBC volcano expert Simon Carn led a group of earth scientists to study how an explosion at a sulfur plant near Mosul, Iraq produced pollution rivaling one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recent history.

On June 24, 2003, dense clouds of sulfur dioxide were produced by an explosion at the Al-Mishraq State Sulfur Plant when arsonists set massive amounts of the gas ablaze. The fire burned for nearly a month, causing widespread respiratory problems in residents and at least two deaths, and by the time it was extinguished, its sulfur dioxide emissions equaled more than half of those released by the 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helens.

“That’s nearly 30 times as much as the most polluting power plants release in a year,” said Carn, a research associate at UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET). “It was the largest man-made release of polluting sulfur dioxide ever recorded.”

Carn and his team probed the 800-mile plume for 18 days, taking measurements of the emissions based on data collected from TOMS, located on NASA’s Earth Probe satellite. Composite photos of the sulfur clouds were also taken from the Aqua and Terra satellites, showing the concentration of polluting gases and the plume that stretched as far as Syria, Iran, Azerbaijan and the Persian Gulf.

The explosion ultimately cost the region $20 million in refined sulfur and $40 million in local crops, and would have seriously damaged surrounding villages and released dangerous pollutants in the Tigris river had it not been contained. Despite its immediate consequences, scientists speculate that the fire will not have long-lasting effects on the environment.

As part of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) volcanic emissions research group Carn helps develop techniques to detect volcanic gases and activity using satellite monitoring systems.

Carn’s team announced their findings in the Oct. 29 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The research was also featured in Nature News on October 25, 2004.

In the future, the team hopes to monitor coal-burning power plants using an Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), which can track smaller amounts of sulfur dioxide discharge. “With actual measurements, we can find out if a power plant is putting out more sulfur dioxide than it says,” said Carn. Information from OMI, which is based on NASA’s Aura satellite, is expected to reach the team in the next few months.

(2/14/05)