Arctic wildfires emit 35% more CO2 so far in 2020
than for whole of 2019
About 205 megatonnes emitted in June and July alone as
Siberia hit by heatwave
The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Arctic
wildfires this year is already 35% higher than the figure for the whole of
2019.
Tobi Thomas
@tobithomas_
Mon 31 Aug
2020 10.49 BSTLast modified on Mon 31 Aug 2020 11.04 BST
The latest
data, provided by the EU’s Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service, shows that
up to 24 August 245 megatonnes of CO2 had been released from wildfires this
year. The figure for the whole of last year was 181 megatonnes.
The peak
number of active fire observations was about 600 in late July, compared with
400 in 2019. The average equivalent number between 2003 and 2018 was about 100.
Copernicus estimated that 205 megatonnes of CO2 was emitted between 1 June and
31 July alone. The wildfires coincided with a heatwave in Siberia, where
temperatures soared to more than 30C (86F) in some areas.
Dr Mark
Parrington, senior scientist at Copernicus, said the Arctic wildfires this
summer may be setting a new precedent. Emissions increased significantly in
July and early August compared with 2019. “In some respects [the data] has been
similar to 2019 in terms of the dry and warm conditions in the Siberian Arctic.
This year, the difference was a large cluster of fires that burned through July
for many days leading to higher estimated emissions.”
Dr Thomas
Smith, assistant professor in environmental geography at the London School of
Economics, said 2019 had already been an anomalous year in the Arctic circle.
“We have seen two years of anomalously high activity, according to the
satellite record that goes back to 2003,” he said.
Smith also
warned that some fires were destroying ancient peat bogs containing carbon that
has accumulated over thousands of years, a process similar to fossil fuel
burning.
Analysis
performed by Smith, covering May and June of this year, suggested that about
50% of the fires in the Arctic Circle were burning on peat soils, with the vast
majority of the fire activity occurring in eastern Siberia.
Arctic
wildfires have become a cause for concern in recent years, with fires becoming
more widespread and persistent in 2019 and 2020.
In June,
Russia’s aerial forest protection service reported that 3.4m acres of Siberian
forest were burning in areas unreachable to firefighters. Last summer, the
Arctic fires were so intense that they created a cloud of smoke and soot bigger
than the EU landmass.
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