Capturing Time-Resolved Prescribed Fire Emissions with TEMPO Special Observations

Qindan Zhu, Tianjia Liu, Makoto Kelp

Prescribed fires are widely used for land management in the United States, but their emissions remain difficult to quantify due to their small spatial extent and short duration. We present here the first demonstration that high-resolution "special observations" from the TEMPO geostationary instrument resolve sub-hourly nitrogen dioxide NO2 column enhancements from individual prescribed fires in the southeastern US. These observations are able to detect local plumes and track their evolution at minute-to-hourly timescales, enabling top-down and time-resolved emission estimates. Across four case studies in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia during 2025-2026, TEMPO quantifies emissions from individual prescribed fire events that could not previously be time-resolved by existing low-Earth-orbit satellite systems (e.g., TROPOMI, VIIRS). These results demonstrate that geostationary observations can quantify emissions from small, short-lived prescribed fires, thus improving the representation of these emissions in inventories used for fire management and downstream air quality applications.