Fighting Fire With Fire Found to be Effective in Reducing Wildfires

Prescribed fires bring the same ecological benefits as naturally occurring wildfires.

By Donna Fuscaldo  January 20, 2020

FrozenShutter/iStock

With no end in sight to the devastating wildfires that ravaged Australia, researchers at Stanford University are testing new solutions and one that holds promise is to fight fire with fire.

A team of researchers at Stanford University explained in a paper that was published in journal Nature Sustainability that prescribed burns in combination with thinning vegetation enables the fire to climb up the tree and reduce the risk of wildfires.

RELATED: SMOKE FROM AUSTRALIAN WILDFIRES DETECTED BY SATELLITES OVER SOUTH AMERICA

California needs prescribed burns on 20% of land area

These prescribe fires rarely spread beyond the boundaries set for them and bring the same ecological benefits that naturally occurring fires do including reducing disease and insects in the forest.

The researchers estimate that in California there needs to be prescribed burns or thinning vegetation on around 20 million acres, which amounts to about 20% of the land area in the state, in order to have an impact on reducing the wildfires. Over the years plans for prescribed burns have risen but half the acres that were supposed to be burned were not over concerns about smoky air, "outdated regulations" and limited resources, the researchers said in a press release announcing the results of their work.

“Prescribed burns are effective and safe,” said study co-author Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies. “California needs to remove obstacles to their use so we can avoid more devastating wildfires.”
More needs to be done on the government level

While California is taking steps to pick up the pace of prescribed fires the researchers argued more needs to be done and called for consistent funding for wildfire prevention, federal workforce rebuilding, and training programs to increase the number of prescribed burn crews and the establishment of standards for approving prescribed burns. Their suggestions would require a multi-year commitment by both the executive and legislative branches of the government but would be well worth it if it reduced the number of wildfires.

“As catastrophic climate impacts intensify, societies increasingly need to innovate to keep people safe,” said study co-author Katharine Mach, an associate professor at the University of Miami who was director of the Stanford Environment Assessment Facility and senior research scientist in the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences at the time of the research. “Much of this innovation is conceptually simple: making sure the full portfolio of responses, prescribed burns and beyond, can be deployed.”

A Novel Way to Prevent Wildfires

A primer on wildfires and the future of wildfire prevention with spray-on gels.

By Kashyap Vyas December 29, 2019

Scott L/Wikimedia Commons


If you have been following international news, then you know that the occurrences of wildfires have increased significantly in recent years. This is not entirely surprising to scientists who have been studying the effects of climate change, as they've sort of been expecting it, but it is still as damaging.

Wildfires are uncontrolled fires in areas covered by vegetation such as forests or bushes and grasslands. They are alternately known as forest fires or bush fires.

RELATED: ARCTIC WILDFIRES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON OUR PLANET

For all purposes, they can be called disasters.

The problem is that we cannot anticipate these fires, and even if we could, there's not much we could do to prevent them. But that’s about to change with this recent discovery.

Before we get to that, let us take a brief look at what causes wildfires and the effects of wildfires.

What causes wildfires?

Wildfires can be natural or human-made.

Human-made causes are mostly as a result of carelessness and account for 90% of forest fires. An unattended campfire or an unextinguished cigarette butt can cause these fires.

Other common man-made causes are burning debris, fireworks, and accidental or intentional arson.

Naturally, a fire can rise from erupting volcanoes or lightning. When lightning strikes trees, power cables, or any other combustible material, it can lead to wildfires.

Once the fire starts, it spreads rapidly based on the concentration of the flammable vegetation, topography, and weather conditions. A wildfire can spread quickly, sometimes reaching speeds up to 6.7 miles an hour in forests and 14mph in grasslands.

Where are wildfires most common?

Wildfires occur in some parts of every continent, with the exception of Antarctica. They are common in the forests of the United States and Canada, as well as Australia and South Africa globally.

In Europe, Portugal sees the most numbers of wildfires. Greece and Russia are also prone to fires as well.

These are usually areas with enough moisture and rainfall to support the growth of forests that also feature long periods of dry heat. California wildfires took the headline in 2018.

It was replaced by the Arctic fires in 2019.

The effects of wildfire

Wildfires can have a devastating impact on the nation. The primary loss that comes to mind is that of human lives.

Even though the premises in nearby areas are usually vacated, and the fire is contained, there is an imminent risk to lives. The California fires of 2018 claimed 85 human lives.


There is also the loss of property, which is enormous. Thousands are left homeless due to the destruction, and many more houses get damaged.

Also, huge capital goes into trying to control these fires. The number is as high as $2 billion annually just in the US.

Lastly, the loss of habitat and forest destruction is massive. 149,000 acres of forest were consumed in the forest fire. This not only destroys important natural habitats, but it also consumes thousands of trees and releases hazardous levels of pollutants into the atmosphere.

But wildfires aren’t necessarily bad for the environment. Naturally occurring wildfires can be seen as nature’s way of returning resources trapped in the dead or diseased matter to return to earth.

They also kill disease-carrying plants and harmful insects.

How are wildfires stopped?

There are two significant ways of stopping the fires from spreading outwards. One way is to use water and other retardants to douse the fire with hopes of extinguishing it.

Depending on the conditions, specific areas may be given priority if it is estimated that they will accelerate faster and might get difficult to control later on.

If the fire is too big for that, we may clear the surrounding area of the forest by removing any possible fuel source. This way, the fire gets contained within the region.

This cleared-out line is known as the control line. Ironically, sometimes firefighters may use fire to create a control line that is big enough to contain the fire.

Water bodies such as rivers can act as naturally occurring control lines. Moreover, having one around means planes and helicopters can carry water from them and drop it on top of the fire.

Once the fire begins to clear, the firemen make sure that there are no embers that are still burning as they may spark a fire again. Fighting a wildfire requires active strategizing and action.

Spray-on gels

As children, we’re taught that it's better to prevent than to cure. The exact saying applies to wildfires as well. There have been many chemicals employed to do just this.

Unfortunately, they get washed away or decay into constituents. But a group of researchers at Stanford might have just made a breakthrough, as reported in a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The newly discovered gel-like fluid can be sprayed to make the retardants last longer. It is expected to be environment-friendly, and the initial tests have returned positive results.

They are stable enough to last entire seasons, where chances of wildfires are at the peak. If approved, it could save millions of dollars in the prevention and control of wildfires.

The technology is a cellulose-based gel-like fluid that is resistant to the effects of wind, rain, and other harsh environments, making it better suited as a preventive substance than the currently used suppressants and retardants, which act for much shorter durations.

This solution is considered “more proactive, rather than reactive,” to quote Eric Appel, the study’s senior author.

The simple idea is that the majority of wildfires break out at the same hotspots like roadsides, campgrounds, and remote electrical lines. If the forests around these areas are sprayed with this solution, the fires will get contained and easily manageable, thus saving the state millions in both damages and counter-measures.

The researchers are working with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) to test their solution. So far, it has been tested on grass and chamise and found to work even after half an inch of rainfall.

Thus, it is established to have better resistance to rains. The next test is to see its viability in high-risk roadside areas.

RELATED: NASA SAYS AMAZON FIRES WERE ALSO FUELLED BY WATER-STRESSED PLANTS

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. There is a huge necessity for a solution like this, particularly in high-risk areas such as California. At the same time, our unscrupulous behavior that led to these situations in the first place, calls for a solution, and preventive measures have to be taken one way or another.

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Wildfires Have Long-Term Health Effects, Both Direct and Indirect, Several Studies Show

 

A recent systematic review of studies on long-term impacts of wildfires finds they are associated with mental health disorders, COVID-19 complications, death from heart disease, shorter height in children and poorer overall health.

July 30, 2023 by The Journalist's Resource 

By Naseem S. Miller

From the U.S. to Canada to Greece, wildfires have been wreaking havoc across the globe in recent months, burning land, forests and homes, and killing or displacing wildlife and humans. The smoke can affect people near and far from the fires.

Wildfire smoke is a mix of gases and fine particles from burning trees, plants, buildings, and other material, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The smoke contains small pollutants known as particle matter, or PM 2.5, which are 30 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. These particles can go deep into the lungs and reach the bloodstream.

Exposure to wildfire smoke can irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, alter immune function, and increase susceptibility to respiratory infections, including COVID-19, according to the CDC. In June, the agency issued an advisory to health professionals about the acute signs and symptoms of smoke exposure, as smoke from wildfires in Canada affected air quality in parts of U.S.

https://journalistsresource.org/health/lancet-climate-countdown-2022/

Moreover, wildfires can upend people’s lives, leading to mental stress.

Several studies have established the short-term health effects of wildfire exposure, finding an association with higher risk of death and respiratory and cardiovascular complications. A 2022 study, published in Science of the Total Environment, finds the Australian bushfires in 2019 and 2020 were associated with a 6% increase in emergency department visits for respiratory diseases and 10% increase for cardiovascular diseases.

But there’s still a dearth of population-based high-quality evidence on the long-term health effects of wildfires, according to the authors of “Long-term impacts of non-occupational wildfire exposure on human health: A systematic review,” published in Environmental Pollution in March 2023.

The authors review 36 academic studies, mostly from Australia, Canada and the U.S., which were published between 1987 and 2022. The majority focus on health impacts one to two years after exposure to a wildfire. More than half of the studies focus on mental health. The authors note that most of the included studies were from developed countries with limited data.

Study findings

The analysis finds in the long term, wildfires and wildfire smoke are associated with mental health disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, respiratory diseases and COVID-19 complications, death from heart disease and poorer general health.

Among the findings:

There was no significant long-term association between wildfire exposure and child mortality and hospitalization due to respiratory diseases.

Several studies showed an association between wildfire exposure and increased risk of flu rates, asthma in children and different types of cancer.

One study from Israel found higher hospitalization rates two years after wildfire exposure compared with the year before the wildfire occurred. In addition, people with underlying health conditions, such as overweight or obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and lower income had higher rates of hospitalizations than those without underlying health conditions and higher income.

Two studies found that wildfire exposure is associated with shorter height in children, especially when moms were exposed to the smoke during the pregnancy. One study suggests that may be due to the impact of wildfire smoke on pregnant moms’ respiratory health.

The authors of the systematic review add that current evidence, although limited, suggests people with certain vulnerabilities — including smoking, lower levels of education, obesity, older age, underlying diseases and lower income — might be at higher risk of negative long-term effects of wildfire exposure.

All 21 studies that assessed the association between wildfire exposure and mental health found negative impacts in adults. Those associations include anger problems, possible post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and heavy drinking. Most studies found a higher rate of PTSD symptoms after exposure to wildfires.

There are several reasons why wildfires have long-term impacts on health, the authors of the systematic review explain.

• Direct impact, including long-term injuries, and even death, resulting from burns and inhalation of smoke during the fires.
• Indirect impact via air pollution and mental stress resulting from economic loss, casualties and forced evacuations.
• Damage at the cellular and molecular level. Air pollution, including smoke, might cause DNA damage, decrease the viability of cells and result in cell death. The smoke can also lead to inflammation in the body and the brain.

“The population-based high-quality evidence with quantitative analysis on this topic is still limited,” they write. “Given the long-term projections of increasing frequency of wildfires and length of the wildfire season due to climate change, the anticipated increase in the frequency and acreage burned by prescribed fires, and the increasing aging population that is more vulnerable to suffer from long-term impacts of wildfire exposure, more scientific evidence is urgently needed to determine long-term impacts of wildfire exposure on human health.”

Wildfires and climate change

https://journalistsresource.org/media/scientific-consensus-news-tips/

Compared with 2001 to 2004, nearly 60% of countries experienced an increased number of days that people were exposed to very or extremely high fire risk and 72% of countries had increased human wildfire exposure during 2017 to 2020, the study authors note.

The intensity and frequency of wildfires is increasing in the U.S. and worldwide. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there were 20 wildfires that caused more than $1 billion in damage between 1980 and 2021 in the U.S. Sixteen of those have occurred since 2000, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

Wildfires are among the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change indictors, which show the causes and effects of climate change. Wildfires occur naturally and play a role in maintaining the ecosystems in forests and grasslands, but too many wildfires can throw off the nature’s balance.

Wildfire season has gotten longer and there are more wildfires affecting more areas. This increase is due to several factors, including warmer springs, longer dry summers and drier soil and vegetation, according to the EPA.

Funding

The study was funded by the Australian Research Council and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. The authors declared no competing financial interests.

How to access this study

Environmental Pollution is published by Elsevier, a Dutch publishing company specializing in scientific research. This study is behind Elsevier’s paywall, but there are several ways you can access it, including emailing the senior author, Shanshan Li. We also have a list of academic journals and publishing companies that offer journalists access to their content upon request.

Additional research

• Preterm birth and term low birth weight associated with wildfire-specific PM2.5: A cohort study in New South Wales, Australia during 2016–2019 Yiwen Zhang, et al. Environment International, April 2023.
• Wildfire smoke and symptoms affecting mental health among adults in the U.S. state of Oregon Maria C. Mirabelli, et al. Preventive Medicine, November 2022.
• Exposure to wildfire-related PM2.5 and site-specific cancer mortality in Brazil from 2010 to 2016: A retrospective study Pei Yu, et al. September 2022, PLOS Medicine.
• Long-term health effects of wildfire exposure: A scoping review Emily Grant and Jennifer D. Runkle. The Journal of Climate Change and Health, May 2022.
• Long-term exposure to wildfires and cancer incidence in Canada: a population-based observational cohort study Jill Korsiak, et al. The Lancet Planetary Health, May 2022.
• Wildfire exposure during pregnancy and the risk of adverse birth outcomes: A systematic review Sana Amjad, et al. Environment International, November 2021.
• Mortality risk attributable to wildfire-related PM2·5 pollution: a global time series study in 749 locations
  Gongbo Chen, et al. The Lancet Planetary Health, September 2021.
• Risk and burden of hospital admissions associated with wildfire-related PM2·5 in Brazil, 2000–15: a nationwide time-series study Tingting Ye, et al. The Lancet Planetary Health, September 2021.
• Psychological effects of the 2017 California wildfires on children and youth with disabilities Elizabeth McAdams Ducy and Laura M. Stough. Research in Developmental Disabilities, July 2021.
• Wildfires, Global Climate Change, and Human Health Rongbin Xu, et al. The New England Journal of Medicine, November 2020.
• The health impacts and economic value of wildland fire episodes in the U.S.: 2008–2012 Neal Fann, et al. Science of The Total Environment, January 2018.

Resources to track wildfires and air quality

• The Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) U.S./Canada shows all active fires in the two countries. FIRMS also provides a map of wildfires around the world.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow shows the level of air quality based in ZIP code, city or state. AirNow also has a fire and smoke map.
• The National Interagency Fire Center provides current data on wildfires in the U.S., including the number of firefighters fighting the fires and the acres burned.
• The CDC has a guide on how people can protect themselves from wildfire smoke.
• The wildfires layer on Google Maps shows active wildfires.
• Several news outlets track wildfires or air quality and smoke from wildfires, including The New York Times and CNN.

 

This article first appeared on The Journalist’s Resource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Hot poles: Antarctica, Arctic 70 and 50 degrees above normal

Earth’s poles are undergoing simultaneous freakish extreme heat with parts of Antarctica more than 70 degrees (40 degrees Celsius) warmer than average and areas of the Arctic more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) warmer than average.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Weather stations in Antarctica shattered records Friday as the region neared autumn. The two-mile high (3,234 meters) Concordia station was at 10 degrees (-12.2 degrees Celsius),which is about 70 degrees warmer than average, while the even higher Vostok station hit a shade above 0 degrees (-17.7 degrees Celsius), beating its all-time record by about 27 degrees (15 degrees Celsius), according to a tweet from extreme weather record tracker Maximiliano Herrera.

The coastal Terra Nova Base was far above freezing at 44.6 degrees (7 degrees Celsius).

It caught officials at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, by surprise because they were paying attention to the Arctic where it was 50 degrees warmer than average and areas around the North Pole were nearing or at the melting point, which is really unusual for mid-March, said center ice scientist Walt Meier.

“They are opposite seasons. You don’t see the north and the south (poles) both melting at the same time,” Meier told The Associated Press Friday evening. “It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.”

“It’s pretty stunning,” Meier added.

“Wow. I have never seen anything like this in the Antarctic,” said University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos, who returned recently from an expedition to the continent.

“Not a good sign when you see that sort of thing happen,” said University of Wisconsin meteorologist Matthew Lazzara.

Lazzara monitors temperatures at East Antarctica’s Dome C-ii and logged 14 degrees (-10 degrees Celsius) Friday, where the normal is -45 degrees (-43 degrees Celsius): “That’s a temperature that you should see in January, not March. January is summer there. That’s dramatic.”

Both Lazzara and Meier said what happened in Antarctica is probably just a random weather event and not a sign of climate change. But if it happens again or repeatedly then it might be something to worry about and part of global warming, they said.

The Antarctic warm spell was first reported by The Washington Post.

The Antarctic continent as a whole on Friday was about 8.6 degrees (4.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than a baseline temperature between 1979 and 2000, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, based on U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration weather models. That 8-degree heating over an already warmed-up average is unusual, think of it as if the entire United States was 8 degrees hotter than normal, Meier said.

At the same time, on Friday the Arctic as a whole was 6 degrees (3.3 degrees) warmer than the 1979 to 2000 average.

By comparison, the world as a whole was only 1.1 degrees (0.6 degrees Celsius) above the 1979 to 2000 average. Globally the 1979 to 2000 average is about half a degree (.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average.

What makes the Antarctic warming really weird is that the southern continent — except for its vulnerable peninsula which is warming quickly and losing ice rapidly — has not been warming much, especially when compared to the rest of the globe, Meier said.

Antarctica did set a record for the lowest summer sea ice — records go back to 1979 — with it shrinking to 741,000 square miles (1.9 million square kilometers) in late February, the snow and ice data center reported.

What likely happened was “a big atmospheric river” pumped in warm and moist air from the Pacific southward, Meier said.

And in the Arctic, which has been warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe and is considered vulnerable to climate change, warm Atlantic air was coming north off the coast of Greenland.

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Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press

Wildfires Are Fueling a Dangerous Feedback Loop of Arctic Warming

Ed Cara 

Wildfires across the globe are contributing to conditions that make future fires more likely, new research finds. The study estimates that brown carbon emissions from sources like wildfires are a greater contributor to warming in the Arctic atmosphere than previously thought. And because this warming then contributes to the weather conditions that give rise to wildfires in the first place, today’s fires are likely helping fuel increasingly stronger ones in the future, the researchers say.

© Photo: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto (Getty Images)

 A nighttime view of a wildfire on the Greek island of Evia on August 9, 2021.

Brown carbon aerosol particles are known by their ability to absorb sunlight. This then traps solar radiation within Earth, as opposed to other aerosol particles that reflect it back out to space. Alongside black carbon—caused by the incomplete burning of fossil fuels that can be seen from sources like diesel engines—brown carbon is thought to play an important role in climate change, but there’s still much we don’t know about its relative contributions to it.

This new research, published in the journal One Earth, was five years in the making. In 2017, scientists took the Chinese icebreaker ship Xue Long on a two-month expedition to the Arctic. Once there, they took direct measurements of the atmosphere, focusing particularly on brown carbon emissions that had ended up there.

The Arctic has been warming even faster than the rest of the world, and the team’s modeling, based on the direct observations made from their trip, indicate that brown carbon has been one major reason why.

“The warming effect of brown carbon in the Arctic was generally ignored in previous climate models,” study author Pingqing Fu, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and biogeochemistry at Tianjin University, told Gizmodo in an email. “By the addition of it, we find that brown carbon can be a strong warming agent in the Arctic, which highlights the importance to manage the wildfires in its surrounding regions in the future.”

Fu and his team now figure that brown carbon’s warming effect in the Arctic is about 30% of that of black carbon’s. About 60% of these emissions come from sources of biofuel burning, including wildfires in the middle and high latitude areas of the world, which release both black and brown carbon into the air. And as the Arctic warms, so do other regions of Earth, setting the stage for an ever-increasing ramp-up of climate disaster.

“The increase in brown carbon aerosols will lead to global or regional warming, which increases the probability and frequency of wildfires. Increased wildfire events will emit more brown carbon aerosols, further heating the earth, thus making wildfires more frequent,” Fu said.

So far, wildfires are holding up their end of the bargain. Last year, fires broke regional records in carbon emissions, including in parts of Siberia close to the Arctic. Last month, a UN report estimated that the number of wildfires is likely to increase around 30% percent by 2050 and 50% by 2100. Much as the current study’s authors found, these fires are likely to have a “mutually exacerbating” effect on climate change, the UN authors concluded—one that countries aren’t prepared for.

Indeed, while the news gets more dire every day, global cooperation on fighting climate change continues to be muddled as even meager attempts to dial down emissions in general are being fiercely resisted by some governments and fossil fuel interests.

The authors, for their part, say that “the careful management of vegetation fires, especially in the mid- to high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, will prove important in mitigating the warming in the Arctic region.” And Fu notes that every effort to tamp down emissions across the board still matters.

“People can do something to hamper the positive feedback loop among the link of brown carbon, arctic melting, and wildfires. For example, the continuous reduction of the anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel combustion efficiently decreases the emissions of both black carbon and brown carbon,” he said.

The team next plans to investigate how wildfires may affect the aerosol chemistry of the marine atmosphere over the western Pacific, as well as its potential climate effects there.

Carbon from wildfires warms the Arctic TWICE as much as fossil fuels

Shivali Best For Mailonline 

Last year was a record year for wildfires, with devastating blazes wreaking havoc in California, Australia and Siberia.

While wildfires destroy homes, plant life and animals, they also contribute to global warming, according to a new study.

Researchers from Tianjin University have revealed how 'brown carbon' released during wildfires in the northern hemisphere are accelerating global warming in the Arctic.

Their study revealed that brown carbon from burning biomass – including from wildfires – was responsible for at least twice as much warming as black carbon from fossil fuel burning.

Worryingly, they say this could spark a vicious cycle, leading to even more wildfires in the near future.

'The increase in brown carbon aerosols will lead to global or regional warming, which increases the probability and frequency of wildfires,' said Professor Pingging Fu, senior author of the study.

'Increased wildfire events will emit more brown carbon aerosols, further heating the earth, thus making wildfires more frequent.'

© Provided by Daily Mail Researchers from Tianjin University revealed how 'brown carbon' released during wildfires in the northern hemisphere is accelerating global warming in the Arctic. Pictured: The Dixie wildfire in California

© Provided by Daily Mail Their analysis revealed that brown carbon from burning biomass – including from wildfires – was responsible for at least twice as much warming as black carbon from fossil fuel burning

Wildfires in the US are increasing due to climate change

Recent fires have fueled concerns that regional and global warming trends are leading to more extreme burning.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder analyzed data on thousands of wildfires since 1984.

They found evidence that average fire events in regions of the US were four times the size, triple the frequency, and more widespread in the 2000s than in the previous two decades.

The most extreme fires were also larger, more common, and more likely to co-occur with other extreme fires.

'This documented shift in burning patterns across most of the country aligns with the palpable change in fire dynamics noted by the media, public, and fire-fighting officials,' they said.

Brown carbon is a major product of wildfires, and is created when grasses, wood, and other biological material burn.

It poses severe health hazards and can even block out the sun enough to cause measurable temperature differences at the surface - even after the flames have died down.

In contrast, black carbon, also known as soot, is released from high-temperature fossil fuel burning.

To understand how brown carbon affects the Arctic, the team travelled there in 2017 on board the Chinese icebreaker vessel Xue Long.

There, they completed observational analyses and numerical simulations to understand the contributing factors behind ice melt in the Arctic.

Their analysis revealed that brown carbon was contributing to warming in the Arctic more than previously thought.

'To our surprise, observational analyses and numerical simulations show that the warming effect of brown carbon aerosols over the Arctic is up to about 30 per cent of that of black carbon,' said Professor Fu.

Their analysis also revealed that brown carbon from burning biomass – including from wildfires – was responsible for at least twice as much warming as black carbon from fossil fuel burning.

The researchers point out that in the last 50 years, the Arctic has been warming at a rate three times that of the rest of the planet – and say that it's likely that wildfires are one of the leading drivers.

© Provided by Daily Mail Last year was a record year for wildfires, with devastating blazes wreaking havoc in California (pictured), Australia and Siberia

The team hopes the findings will draw more attention to the impacts of wildfires on the climate.

'Our findings highlight just how important it is to control wildfires,' Professor Fu added.

The study comes shortly after research revealed that wildfires in the US are becoming more extreme as a results of climate change.

According to work by the University of Colorado Boulder, on average, US wildfires have become four times larger and three times more frequent since 2000.

The team suggests that these large wildfires are also spreading into new areas, and impacting land that previously wasn't subjected to regular burning.

'Projected changes in climate, fuel and ignitions suggest that we'll see more and larger fires in the future. Our analyses show that those changes are already happening,' said Virginia Iglesias, the study's lead author from UC Boulder.

They found that the West and the Great Plains were most affected, but that there were more fires across all regions in the contiguous U.S. in the past two decades.

The findings come off the back of a report by the United Nations that found global wildfires could increase by up to 50 percent over the next 80 years due to global warming

'The next Maui could be anywhere': Hawaii tragedy points to US wildfire vulnerability

Terry Collins, USA TODAY
Updated Sat, August 19, 2023 

The deadly wildfires in Maui reveal a vulnerability in the United States that is increasing as quickly as threats from climate change: Huge swaths of the nation lie in dry danger zones where wildfires spark, and cash-strapped governments have ineffective emergency plans to save lives.

That was the deadly combination in the Maui disaster - namely, wildfire risk coupled with what some experts and victims have called questionable emergency preparedness. And it has played out in some of the deadliest fires in the nation and around the globe, alarming fire experts and community leaders.

Similar scenarios happened in Paradise, California, where 85 people died and nearly 19,000 structures were destroyed in the Camp Fire in 2018; and in Algeria, Italy and Greece, where questions of effective emergency response and preparedness have been raised after more than 40 people combined died from wildfires sparked by an intense heat wave, high winds and dry vegetation last month. Canada is experiencing a devastating record wildfire season, with over 33.9 million acres scorched and at least four people dead so far.

In Maui, where at least 111 people have died and more than 2,200 acres were burned in the Aug. 8 wildfires, the county already knew it had a high wildfire risk, according to a study it commissioned two years ago following an "unprecedented wildfire season" in 2019, where more than 20,000 acres were burned.

"Hawaii’s and Maui’s fire problem is more extreme than on the U.S. mainland," the study said, noting dozens of buildings and vehicles were damaged in a 2018 wildfire. While there were no deaths in either of those years, warnings were raised - and possibly not heeded by local officials.

Now, experts from around the world are taking a second look at many places that may also be at risk after Maui's crisis, which now is among the top ten deadliest wildfires on record in the U.S. since 1871.

"The next Maui could be anywhere," said Tirtha Banerjee, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine. "Realistically, almost any place could have a wildfire."

Properties destroyed in the West Maui Wildfire are seen near Front Street in Lahaina on Maui, Hawaii Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.

America isn't the only country worried about wildfires

Thousands of communities, from urban enclaves, coastal towns and remote locales throughout the U.S., and abroad, similar to Maui, are vulnerable to wildfires because of the increasingly deadly combination of climate change and governments' lack of emergency plans and resources, experts say.

"There seems to be a consensus among those in the scientific community that it might get worse for a bit before it gets better," Banerjee said.

Alexis Normand, CEO of Greenly, a platform helping companies track their carbon use, said, a wildfire can happen in the "most unthinkable places around the world" under the right conditions. In the past month, big blazes in the Greek Islands, the Canary Islands and Indonesia's Sumatra Islands have led to intense burning stemming from heatwaves across Southern Europe and North Africa, Normand pointed out.

Normand also referred to the thousands of residents who are now evacuating from Canada's northwest territories, leading to emergency declarations due to wildfires. Close to 400 active fires are still burning across British Columbia.

A pedestrian walks along Honoapiilani Highway as properties destroyed by the West Maui Fire are seen in Lahaina on Maui, Hawaii Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023.

"There's also an increasing scarcity of water in places like France, Australia and Egypt," Normand said by phone from Paris. "I don’t want to sound too pessimistic, but the answer is definitely, yes. Wildfires are happening more frequently and in more uncommon places."

Global warming is causing wildfires to increase at the same time as communities might not be committed to investing in and executing preparedness plans to reduce wildfire risks, said Laurie Wayburn, co-founder and president of Pacific Forest Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit.

"As bad as the situation is here in America, it may be just as bad in Europe as they are learning the same lessons we are," Wayburn said. "It appears you have to be in the middle of a crisis to make you learn that you have to avoid tragedies from the onset."
Wildfires across US 'burning hotter, faster with more intensity'

Record high temps, extreme drought conditions and substantially high winds during major weather events, including storms with thunder and lightning, are among the causes for the recent spikes in wildfire activity in high-risk locations across the U.S., Canada and Europe, said Michele Steinberg, the wildlife division director at the National Wildfire Protection Agency.

In the U.S., nearly half the land area is composed of forest, shrubs, and grassland, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Currently, there are nearly 45 million U.S. homes located near or adjacent to these areas, the EPA said.

Within the last five years, wildfires have destroyed nearly 63,000 structures. A majority of them are homes, said Steinberg, who also serves on President Joe Biden's Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission.

"We’re definitely seeing a huge increase. It's significantly higher than in the past 10 years," Steinberg said. That's mostly due to Americans settling down in once-rural areas, particularly in the southern and western states in the last half-century or so, she said.

"We're moving into these fire-prone areas," Steinberg said. "Now we have a lot more wildfires that will burn hotter, faster and with more intensity due to these conditions."
'Most deadliest and devastating wildfires in front of us'

Andrew Bozzo, a fire captain at the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District in the San Francisco Bay Area, said "Americans are getting a front-row seat to wildfires like never before."

"The most deadliest and devastating wildfires are happening right in front of us," said Bozzo, a firefighter for 25 years. "We half-heartedly joke in the fire industry that all of those tactics we’ve learned . . . throw them out of the window."

Bozzo said Americans, and those in other countries, have simply not heeded the warnings about an evolving environment due to climate change. A former scientist, Bozzo said heat-trapping carbon dioxide is hitting all corners of the Earth at record levels.

Destroyed homes and businesses are seen in the aftermath of the Maui wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 16, 2023.

There's also a variety of factors contributing to wildfires globally, Bozzo said. Among them are the spread of invasive plants, trees, and grasses. And while rain and snowpacks may reduce drought conditions and the risk of fires starting, Bozzo said, it also increases vegetation growth, which can become fuel for fires during the dry summer months if not cut or removed.

Many municipalities may not make certain strategies, including thinning oversized forests by cutting trees and shrubbery and conducting prescribed burns to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, a priority, Bozzo said.

"By no means is this just limited to the U.S. There have always been wildfires in Greece and France, but have they been at this magnitude we're seeing? No," said Bozzo, who is also the co-founder of Tablet Command, an incident response software platform used by fire departments in San Francisco, Charlotte, North Carolina, Columbus, Ohio and Los Angeles County. "These wildfires . . . no, mega-fires . . . are not one-offs. The coordinated plans to prevent them has to be a continuous and committed effort."
Lessons learned from Maui wildfire: 'We're going to pay 10 times over'

In the 2021 Maui County report on wildfire prevention, officials were encouraged to take an "aggressive plan to replace hazardous fuel sources" that start wildfires.

Wildfire experts in Hawaii, including Camilo Mora, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, said they have warned state officials for years that wildfire preparedness was essential. Mora said he was among many who cited that overgrown grasses and other quick-burning vegetation used as fuels put certain areas, including Maui, at risk.

Vegetation grows quickly amid rainfall, but also dries out in drought, Mora said. Left unattended, the vegetation is ripe for a quick burn during a fire. And that's what he believes happened in the Maui wildfire, as a result of not enough being done.

He cited Hawaii’s Forestry and Wildlife division, which handles fire suppression and fire prevention, has about $28 million in its operating budget for this fiscal year. Probably not enough funds to do what's necessary, Mora said.

"We didn't pay enough attention," Mora said. "This was not an unannounced tragedy, we knew this coming. It was just a matter of when."

The 2021 report also said island communities are "particularly vulnerable because populations tend tobe clustered and dependent" on single highways. "Escape routes and evacuation locations and resources for populations impacted by fire incidents are also impeded by fire incursions," the report said.

Residents in Lahaina reportedly were having problems getting out of the popular residential and tourist town as traffic was at a complete standstill on Honoapiilani Highway, the main road, while the wildfire spread.

While rebounding towns like Paradise, California, are working on their wildfire mitigation plans, Mora said he's pondering and calculating the emotional, physical and potentially fiscal impact the wildfire will have in Maui going forward.

He's sure Hawaii officials, local and state, are going to turn the tragedy into substantive action with wildfire prevention. He and thousands of others will be devastated if they don’t.

"More hands for the restoration and reconstruction are needed," Mora pleaded. "Because of the damage from this fire, we're probably going to pay 10 times over what it would've cost to fix this problem in the beginning."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Maui deadly fires could happen again in many US cities and towns

Australia's Devastating Wildfires Seen from Space

By Doris Elin Salazar - Space.com Staff Writer 5 days ago

The Australian wildfires can be viewed in incredible detail via NASA's Worldview tool.

The Worldview tool from NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) shows this scene on Jan. 2, 2020, as wildfires continue in their intensity along the southeastern coast of Australia.  (Image credit: NASA EOSDIS)

Satellites in space can spot changes to Earth's climate, and they are providing frightening bird's-eye views of the devastating consequences of global warming. 

The wildfires raging in the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria began in November 2019, and they continue to pose severe safety and environmental problems. NBC News reported that thousands of Australians fled their homes on New Year's Eve (Dec. 31), seeking refuge near the oceanside. On Thursday (Jan. 2) NBC News also reported that New South Wales declared a weeklong state of emergency, making this the third time an emergency period has been announced since the fires began. 

"My last day of the decade felt like the apocalypse," Sydney-based photojournalist Matt Abbott tweeted on Dec. 31. Abbott, who is covering the wildfires for The New York Times, added: "Been covering the Australian bushfires for the last 6 weeks, but haven't seen anything like yesterday's fire that decimated the town of Conjola, NSW."

Related: Astronaut Sees Devastating California Wildfires from Space (Photos)

My last day of the decade felt like the apocalypse. Been covering the Australian bushfires for the last 6 weeks, but haven’t seen anything like yesterdays fire that decimated the town of Conjola, NSW. #bushfirecrisis #AustralianBushfires #NSWisburning work for @nytimes pic.twitter.com/KmVKqDMKsfJanuary 1, 2020

Information from NASA satellites can teach scientists about the lingering consequences of these events, like the production of dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide. 

NASA operates a group of 26 satellites collectively known as the Earth Observing System (EOS), and its flagship satellite, a bus-sized spacecraft named Terra, hit its 20-year mark in space in December 2019. Other NASA satellites, like Aqua and Suomi NPP, also contribute data to EOS, a mission tasked with taking global measurements of the air, land and water to help scientists learn how those systems fit together and morph over time. 

The Worldview tool from NASA's EOS Data and Information System transforms satellite data into an interactive page with over 900 imagery layers. You can view current natural disasters, like the Australian wildfires, on Worldview by date and information layer (such as thermal anomalies, borders and place labels). You can also watch an animation of activity by selecting a time range. 

A look at Australia's surface starting in October 2019 shows the astounding evolution of wildfires as they multiplied and spewed smoke across Australia's eastern shore. 

NASA's Aqua satellite used its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer to capture this view of wildfires raging on Australia's eastern coast on Dec. 9, 2019. The wildfires were fueled by unusually hot weather and a potent drought that primed the region in October 2019, according to the space agency. (Image credit: NASA EOSDIS)

A severe drought in October 2019 primed the country for the destruction that's still occurring. More than 100 fires raged over the next several months. By Dec. 12, the wildfires in Australia's New South Wales had scourged an area of about 10,000 square miles (27,000 square kilometers), according to NASA representatives in a description of satellite imagery. 

The wildfires are raging on Australia's eastern coast, exposing many communities, including Sydney, to hazardous pollution levels. The Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere instrument on the Terra satellite found that the region is blanketed by abnormally high levels of carbon monoxide, an odorless and dangerous gas that's released by the burning of plants and fossil fuels. 

This map depicts measurements of outgoing longwave radiation in November 2019. The data on Australia's heat emission comes from the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System on board NASA's Terra satellite. (Image credit: EOS-Terra/NASA)

The fires have been particularly damaging to eucalyptus forests. The forests exist in both dry and rainy regions, and both climates are vulnerable to the wildfires for unique reasons. Eucalyptus plants that thrive in dry areas have oil-rich leaves that can easily ignite during a fire, according to a NASA description of the EOS imagery. Fires do help these plants release their seeds, but the dry season in October was so intense that it limited seed germination. Rainforest eucalyptus species, on the other hand, are not accustomed to fires. The ecosystem can't bounce back the way a dry eucalyptus forest could under milder conditions. Unable to tolerate the flames, most of these rainforest plants die under these extreme conditions.

An instrument on NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite observed the unusually hot and dry conditions of November 2019 that fueled the wildfires. The sensor, called the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System,  measures the heat emitted back into space. The instrument measured how the sun's radiation was absorbed, emitted and reflected by Earth's surface during the first month of the wildfires. 

The flames destroy forests and make the air unbreathable for humans, but they also harm the animals that live there. "Browsing animals like kangaroos are driven out by fire for a short time, and the heat treatment of soil reduces the number of plant-eating insects and soil organisms during the early growth period," Ayesha Tulloch, a conservation biologist at the University of Sydney, said in a NASA image description.

This animation is a model of where the black smoke from the raging Australian wildfires is traveling. It's based off of the GEOS forward processing (GEOS FP) model, which combines information from satellite, aircraft and ground-based observation systems and uses data such as air temperature, moisture levels and wind information to project the plume's behavior. (Image credit: GEOS FP/NASA GSFC)

Many koalas have also been affected, or even killed, by these fires. "But the range of the koala covers most [of] the east coast of Australia," Tulloch said. "Relative to its range, the fires are relevant to only a very small proportion of the existing koala population in Australia."

An animation made using the GEOS forward processing (GEOS -FP) model depicts the high levels of black carbon emitted by the wildfires in early November 2019, which then blew through the atmosphere and across the Pacific Ocean. Smoke plumes have risen as high as 7 to 8 miles (12 to 13 km) into the sky, which is unusually high for wildfires, according to a NASA description of the animation.