Severe wildfires in the Russian Arctic cause high CO2 emissions
The number and intensity of wildfires currently raging north of the Arctic Circle are leading to high carbon emissions – the third highest for the Arctic in the month of June since 2003.
From carbon sink to carbon source: The boreal forest and tundra of Siberia are actually considered large carbon reservoirs, but this year’s fierce fires are again turning them into sources of carbon as well as soot particles. With an estimated 6.8 megatons of carbon, the total monthly carbon emissions for the Arctic in June rank third in the last two decades, as the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) reported last week. CAMS had measured the highest emissions for the month of June in 2020 at 16.3 megatons and 2019 at 13.8 megatons.
The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is currently the worst affected region, where until a few days ago there were 107 wildfires covering an area of more than 331,000 hectares. However, according to the latest information from the Russian federal organization Avialesookhrana, which is responsible for protecting forests from fires from the air in Russia, several fires have now been extinguished.
“The Arctic has been warming at a rate well above that of the planet as a whole. As a result, conditions at high northern latitudes are becoming more conducive to wildfires and a recent study shows that the northeast Arctic region, and boreal and temperate forests, have been experiencing increases in extreme wildfires. We witnessed this in 2019, 2020 and 2021, when the eastern Arctic and sub-Arctic regions experienced very high levels of wildfire activity, and again in 2023, especially at high latitudes in Canada,” said Mark Parrington, CAMS senior scientist, in a press release.
In the study he referred to, which appeared last week in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the authors found that climate change is exacerbating the conditions for wildfires. Especially in the boreal and temperate conifer biomes, wildfire events are worsening, with “substantial implications for carbon storage and human exposure to wildfire disasters”.
Gail Whiteman, Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter and founder of Arctic Basecamp, also makes the threat posed by the wildfires abundantly clear: “The increasing Siberian wildfires are a clear warning sign that this essential system is approaching dangerous climate tipping points. What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay there — Arctic change amplifies risks globally for all of us. These fires are a warning cry for urgent action.”
It is not only the emissions released by wildfires that exacerbate climate change, but also the aerosols contained in the smoke. Black carbon – particles produced by the incomplete combustion of biomass etc. – and soot are deposited on snow and ice surfaces. The darker color reduces their albedo, which leads to them absorbing more solar energy and thus melting faster. A vicious circle.
A vicious cycle that is described in more detail in another study published last week in Nature Communications. The team of authors attributes the increase in fires in Siberia at least partly to the reduced sea ice in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean in summer. Due to the decline in sea ice, with melting starting ever earlier in the year, the near-surface layers of the ocean warm up over a longer period of time and release their heat into the atmosphere in the fall and winter before the ice forms again. The authors argue that the loss of sea ice over the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean has led to increased warming over eastern Siberia and a corresponding increase in forest fire activity.
The reports of unusually high surface temperatures in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), which were already around 30 degrees Celsius at the end of May and thus 7 to 9 degrees Celsius higher than normal, fit in with this. Local media are currently reporting temperatures of up to 35 degrees Celsius in the region.
These values are confirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (*C3S): in the first three weeks of June, the soil was significantly drier and the surface temperature higher than the long-term average.
Julia Hager, Polar Journal AG
Links to the studies: Cunningham, C.X., Williamson, G.J. & Bowman, D.M.J.S. Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth. Nat Ecol Evol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02452-2
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