Wildfires and climate change
Research and impact 22nd January 2020
Increasingly we are seeing institutions and the media communicate with frequency and force about climate change. The Natural History Museum declared a ‘planetary emergency’ earlier this week. Throughout January, a three part series by Timothy Morton about the ‘climate crisis’ aired on BBC Radio 4. The Guardian published a piece today relating to the devastating Australian wildfires: ‘Wildfires show us how the climate emergency is already affecting Europe’. The article in the Guardian attempts to bring home the potentially damaging consequences of climate change through connections to the Australian wildfires.
To find out more about the effects of wildfires, I spoke to Dr James Allan, Reader in Atmospheric Science here at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester. James highlighted some of the science behind wildfires that feeds their connection to climate change, including the damaging effects of black carbon:
- One immediate side effect of wildfires is the detriment to health through poor quality air, with the release of large amounts of particulates and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Scientists from Earth and Environmental Sciences have contributed to open access articles the effect of wood burning on air quality.
- The water feedback effect on plants and vegetation. The loss of plants through fires can change the landscape in the long term – with some species unable to grow back, the return of water to the ground can decrease and areas may shift in appearance and biodiversity from, say, a rainforest to a savannah.
- In terms of fire emissions, the aerosols generated by fires can have a big short term effect on the climate. There are complex problems to resolve here, but aerosols released by fires can be both cooling, and, conversely, warming. Aerosols remain in the atmosphere for much shorter periods than carbon dioxide, which can linger for hundreds of years. Aerosol particles can still have an effect on the climate, however, through the cooling effect of hazes, the warming effect of black carbon and the potential to perturb the clouds in the vicinity (depending on a number of factors, such as their height in the atmosphere). Scientists from Earth and Environmental Sciences have contributed to open access articles about biomass burning, and methods of measuring particle emissions.
- An increase in glacial melt is another consequence. Soot, a product of the wildfires, has been settling on glaciers in New Zealand. Because soot (black carbon, which absorbs solar energy) is making glaciers darker, this reduces the reflective capabilities of glaciers and they are melting faster.
- As the planet warms up due to climate change, there will be more droughts, more heatwaves and more fires, and they will last for longer.
Despite knowing about the natural occurrence of wildfires, after speaking to James, I feel like I understand the links between wildfires and climate change with more clarity now – as well as the potential for escalation in the future.
Our academics have been collaborating on a project called CLARIFY, which aims to ‘improve the representation of model estimates for the direct, semi-direct and indirect radiative forcings of biomass burning aerosols, improve our knowledge of microphysical processes and properties of stratocumulus cloud, challenge and validate satellite retrievals of cloud and aerosol properties, and improve global and regional numerical models for climate and weather prediction’.
Post by Jemma Stewart.
aerosolsair qualityAtmospheric sciencebiomass burningblack carbonclimate changeglacial meltparticle emissionspollutionwood burning
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