Modelling and prediction of air pollutant transport during the 2014 biomass burning and forest fires in peninsular Southeast Asia Hiep Nguyen Duc & Ho Quoc Bang & Ngo Xuan Quang Received: 4 March 2015 /Accepted: 12 January 2016 # Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 Abstract During the dry season, from November to April, agricultural biomass burning and forest fires es- pecially from March to late April in mainland Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Viet- nam frequently cause severe particulate pollution not only in the local areas but also across the whole region and beyond due to the prevailing meteorological condi- tions. Recently, the BASE-ASIA (Biomass-burning Aerosols in South East Asia: Smoke Impact Assess- ment) and 7-SEAS (7-South-East Asian Studies) studies have provided detailed analysis and important under- standings of the transport of pollutants, in particular, the aerosols and their characteristics across the region due to biomass burning in Southeast Asia (SEA). Following these studies, in this paper, we study the transport of particulate air pollution across the peninsular region of SEA and beyond during the March 2014 burning period using meteorological modelling approach and available ground-based and satellite measurements to ascertain the extent of the aerosol pollution and transport in the region of this particular event. The results show that the air pollutants from SEA biomass burning in March 2014 were transported at high altitude to southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and beyond as has been highlight- ed in the BASE-ASIA and 7-SEAS studies. There are strong evidences that the biomass burning in SEA espe- cially in mid-March 2014 has not only caused wide- spread high particle pollution in Thailand (especially the northern region where most of the fires occurred) but also impacted on the air quality in Hong Kong as mea- sured at the ground-based stations and in LulinC (Taiwan) where a remote background monitoring station is located. Keywords Biomass burning . Southeast Asia . MODIS aerosol optical depth . CALIPSO aerosol types . Modelling . Weather research forecast (WRF) . Hybrid Single-particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) Introduction In Asia, the three main sources of particulate and gas- eous emission are located in northeast Asia, Southeast Asia (SEA) and the Indian sub-continent. Northeast Asia sources are mainly anthropogenic industrial sources located in China, Korea and Japan and wind-borne dust from Gobi desert. Biomass burning during the dry season is the dominant emission in Environ Monit Assess (2016) 188:106 DOI 10.1007/s10661-016-5106-9 H. N. Duc (*) : N. X. Quang Environmental Quality, Atmospheric Science and Climate Change Research Group & Faculty of Environment and Labour Safety, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam e-mail: nguyenduchiep@tdt.edu.vn H. N. Duc Office of Environment & Heritages, New South Wales, NSW, Australia H. Q. Bang Institute for Environment and Resources/Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam N. X. Quang Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Institute of Tropical Biology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam