Transport of forest fire smoke above the tropopause by supercell convection

A recent letter [Fromm et al., 2000] postulated a link between boreal forest fire smoke and observed stratospheric aerosol enhancements in 1998. Therein a case was made that severe convection played a role in the cross-tropopause transport. A similar occurrence of stratospheric aerosol enhancements in the boreal summer of 2001 was the stimulus to investigate the causal mechanism more deeply. Herein, we show a detailed case illustrating the unambiguous creation of a widespread, dense smoke cloud in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UT/LS) by a Canadian forest fire and explosive convection in May 2001. This event is the apparent common point for several downstream stratospheric mystery cloud observations. Implications of this finding and those pertaining to the boreal summer of 1998 are that convection and boreal biomass burning have an under-resolved and under-appreciated impact on the upper troposphere, lower stratosphere, radiative transfer, and atmospheric chemistry.