Abstract
In November 1988 some 50 atmospheric scientists met at Dookie College, a small campus in the agricultural lands of Victoria, Australia, to map out the scientific goals of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) Program, which was to become one of the first operational Core Projects of the International Geosphere‐Biosphere Program (IGBP). They identified the tropical regions as one of the priority areas for future international, coordinated research in atmospheric chemistry because of the vast biological activity in the tropics, with a correspondingly large potential for biogenic emissions, and the rapidly growing human populations and resulting land use change in these regions. In view of the prominent role that biomass burning plays in the tropics as a source of atmospheric pollutants and of the important ecological functions of vegetation fires in the tropics, the scientists at Dookie created the Biomass Burning Experiment (BIBEX) with the goals of characterizing the fluxes of gases and aerosols from biomass burning to the global atmosphere and assessing the consequences of pyrogenic emissions on chemical and physical climate.
The southern tropical Atlantic region, defined here as the region containing the Amazon basin, the tropical South Atlantic, and southern Africa, was the obvious first focus of research for this project. Large tropical forest and savanna fires had been known to occur here every year. In addition, observations from satellites and from the space shuttle had shown high levels of tropospheric ozone and carbon monoxide to be present over this region every year in the August‐to‐October period. Results from previous campaigns (ABLE 2A, CITE 3, DECAFE 88) also suggested a widespread impact of vegetation fires on both continents on the trace gas and aerosol content of the troposphere in this region.