Unprecedented fire activity above the Arctic Circle linked to rising temperatures
Descals, Adrià (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Gaveau, David (The TreeMap)
Verger, Aleixandre (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Sheil, Douglas (Wageningen University)
Naito, Daisuke (Center for International Forestry Research (Indonesia))
Peñuelas, Josep (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)

Date:	2022
Abstract:	Arctic fires can release large amounts of carbon from permafrost peatlands. Satellite observations reveal that fires burned ~4. 7 million hectares in 2019 and 2020, accounting for 44% of the total burned area in the Siberian Arctic for the entire 1982-2020 period. The summer of 2020 was the warmest in four decades, with fires burning an unprecedentedly large area of carbon-rich soils. We show that factors of fire associated with temperature have increased in recent decades and identified a near-exponential relationship between these factors and annual burned area. Large fires in the Arctic are likely to recur with climatic warming before mid-century, because the temperature trend is reaching a threshold in which small increases in temperature are associated with exponential increases in the area burned.
Grants:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2019-110521GB-I00 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-1005
Note:	Altres ajuts: the Fundación Ramón Areces grant CIVP20A6621
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Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió acceptada per publicar
Published in:	Science, Vol. 378, Issue 6619 (November 2022) , p. 532-537, ISSN 1095-9203

DOI: 10.1126/science.abn9768

Postprint 17 p, 1.1 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > CREAF (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles