Fire emission reconstruction in Africa during the last 500 years: A pilot study

Fire emissions directly affect the global carbon cycle and atmospheric chemistry, yet little is known about past fire variability and the impacts of aerosols produced by biomass burning on the climate system. Tropical savanna fires are the dominant source of carbon from fire emissions and provide more than sixty percent of the global total. The Kilimanjaro ice fields (3o04.6’S; 37o21.2’E, 5893 meters above sea level) are located near the largest savanna system in the world. Glaciers on Kilimanjaro trap and preserve atmospheric aerosols produced by tropical savanna fires. The Kilimanjaro ice cores supply a high-resolution equatorial proxy record that provides a nearly-continuous record of climate parameters (temperature, accumulation, atmospheric chemistry, and aridity) as well as presenting the opportunity for the use of a novel technique to examine the regional fire history. Levoglucosan (1,6-anhydro--D-glucopyranose) is a major component of and a globally present molecular tracer for atmospheric biomass burning. Here, we use triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry to quantify past concentrations of levoglucosan, and consequently biomass burning, in the Kilimanjaro ice core.