Accelerated Wildfires Unlocking Carbon in Alaskan Soils, Study Finds
That last bit is what could make worst-case scenarios happen far sooner than anyone thinks.Climate change is causing wildfires to burn more fiercely, pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than previously thought, according to a new study to be published in Nature Geosciences this week.
This is the first study to reveal that fires in the Alaskan interior - an area spanning 18.5 million hectares - have become more severe in the past 10 years, and have released much more carbon into the atmosphere than was stored by the region’s forests over the same period.
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“Essentially this could represent a runaway climate change scenario in which warming is leading to larger and more intense fires, releasing more greenhouse gases and resulting in more warming.