Summer wildfires in the Arctic may become more frequent than ever: Study

Global warming has given rise to bigger fires in Siberia, following which the release of huge amounts of carbon trapped in Siberian soil appears imminent, a report published in the journal Science said Thursday. The recent fires have released some 150 million tonnes of carbon, in what the researchers depicted as a ‘feedback loop’ of nature in response to global warming.

Researchers expressed fear that a threshold might soon be crossed, beyond which an even smaller rise in temperature may give rise to an exponential increase in the area burned in the Arctic circle

In 2019 and 2020, fires in Siberia destroyed a surface area equivalent to nearly half of that which burned in the previous 40 years, the study said.

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“The area above the Arctic circle heats up four times faster than the rest of the planet and it is this climate amplification which causes abnormal fire activity,” David Gaveau, one of the authors of the study, was quoted as saying by AFP.

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In 2020, fire charred more than 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) of land and released, in CO2 equivalent, as much as that emitted by Spain in one year, the scientists concluded.

In 2020, summer in Siberia was reported to be three times hotter than it was in 1980. The Russian city of Verkhoyansk hit 38 degrees Celsius in summer, a record for the Arctic.

The average air temperature in summer, from June to August, surpassed 10 degrees Celsius only four times in the period under study: in 2001, 2018, 2019 and 2020. These turned out to be the years with the most fires too.

2020-like forest fire events to be more frequent: Study

Looking ahead to the future, the study has predicted two possible scenarios.

In the first one, if nothing is done to fight climate change, fires of the same gravity as in 2020 may occur every year.

In the second scenario, if concentrations of greenhouse gases stabilise and temperatures level out by the second half of this century, severe fires like those of 2020 would break out on average every 10 years, said Adria Descals Ferrando, the main author of the study.

Either way "summers with fires like those of 2020 are going to be more and more frequent starting in 2050 and beyond," said Gaveau.

(With inputs from agencies)

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