The Impact of Boreal Forest Fire on Climate Warming

Abstract

We report measurements and analysis of a boreal forest fire, integrating the effects of greenhouse gases, aerosols, black carbon deposition on snow and sea ice, and postfire changes in surface albedo. The net effect of all agents was to increase radiative forcing during the first year (34 ± 31 Watts per square meter of burned area), but to decrease radiative forcing when averaged over an 80-year fire cycle (–2.3 ± 2.2 Watts per square meter) because multidecadal increases in surface albedo had a larger impact than fire-emitted greenhouse gases. This result implies that future increases in boreal fire may not accelerate climate warming.

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• University of Florida US
• University of California, Irvine US
• Jackson State University US
• University of Colorado Boulder US
• NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research US
• California Institute of Technology US
• Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation AU

Related Publications