Siberian Fires Have Released a Record Amount of Carbon This Year
https://earther.gizmodo.com/siberian-fires-have-released-a-record-amount-of-carbon-1844245153"The fact that fires are burning in the tundra is a huge cause for concern, because the area contains vast stores of carbon-rich landscapes that include peatlands and frozen (for now) soil known as permafrost. Fires have been known to overwinter in peatlands, smoldering underground only to explode in the spring and summer. At least some of the fires in Siberia have done that. The fires near permafrost could be even more worrying, though, which is saying a lot.
“The thawing of permafrost is increasing the potential fuel loading for fires,” Thomas Smith, a fire expert at the London School of Economics, told Earther in an email. “I have a new dataset from [the National Snow and Ice Data Center] that also confirms that many of these fires are burning on supposedly ‘continuous permafrost extent with high ground ice content.’
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Given that this ground should be frozen or at least boggy all year round, it should not be available to burn! But it is burning, which implies that it has thawed out and has dried.”
The fires could set off a nasty feedback loop by releasing carbon that warms the planet, which in turns makes fires and thawing permafrost more likely. It’s one of the feedback loops that poses the greatest risk to the climate while permanently altering the northern landscape.
If you’re like me, it’s easy to look at what’s happening in Siberia right now and wonder if we’re passing a tipping point. If you’re a scientist, it’s easy to look at the situation and say we need more data. Smith told me it’s too early to tell, as did Jessica McCarty, a fire expert at Miami University, Ohio, who told Earther in an email that “tipping points are likely to be complex feedback loops.”"
