Emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane from boreal forest fires in 1998

Abstract

[1] The global boreal forest region experienced some 17.9 million ha of fire in 1998, which could be the highest level of the decade. Through the analysis of fire statistics from North America and satellite data from Russia, semimonthly estimates of area burned for five different regions in the boreal forest were generated and used to estimate total carbon release and CO 2 , CO, and CH 4 emissions. Different levels of biomass, as well as different biomass categories, were considered for each of the five different regions (including peatlands in the Russian Far East and steppes in Siberia), as were different levels of fraction of biomass (carbon) consumed during fires. Finally, two levels of flaming versus smoldering combustion were considered in the model. Boreal forest fire emissions for 1998 were estimated to be 290-383 Tg of total carbon, 828-1103 Tg of CO 2 , 88-128 Tg of CO, and 2.9-4.7 Tg of CH 4 . The higher estimate represents 8.9% of total global carbon emissions from biomass burning, 13.8% of global fire CO emissions, and 12.4% of global fire CH 4 emissions. Russian fires accounted for 71% of the total emissions, with the remainder (29%) from fires in North America. Assumptions regarding the level of smoldering versus flaming generally resulted in small (<4%) variations into the emissions estimates, although in two cases, these variations were higher (6% and 12%). We estimated that peatland fires in the Russian Far East contributed up to 40 Tg of carbon to the atmosphere in the fall of 1998. The combined seasonal CO emissions from forest and peatland fires in Russia are consistent with anomalously high atmospheric CO measurements collected at Point Barrow, Alaska.

Fire dynamics during the 20th century simulated by the Community Land Model

“…The models did a poorer job in reproducing the variability in boreal regions. For example, the models predicted higher than average emissions in boreal North America during 1998, matching observations (Kasischke and Bruhwiler, 2003), but missed the large burning event in 2004.…”

Natural and anthropogenic methane fluxes in Eurasia: a mesoscale quantification by generalized atmospheric inversion

“…Wetlands are responsible for diffuse fluxes on large areas, with a high temporal variability depending on the local weather conditions (typically temperature or water table depth). The emissions of CH 4 from wildfires come from point sources and occur on relatively short periods (Kasischke and Bruhwiler, 2002). Consequently, we do not aggregate the different types of emissions along the same spatial patterns and temporal intervals.…”

A data-driven approach to identify controls on global fire activity from satellite and climate observations (SOFIA V1)

“…to El Niño events (Andela and van der Werf, 2014;Balzter et al, 2005;Giglio et al, 2013;Hess et al, 2001). Such years with extreme fire activity in forests can cause large emissions of greenhouse gases (Kasischke and Bruhwiler, 2002;Vinogradova et al, 2015), dominate together with peatland fires the inter-annual variability of global fire emissions (Page et al, 2002;van der Werf et al, 2006, and thus strongly affect atmospheric composition (Langenfelds et al, 2002;Simpson et al, 2006). Consequently, a realistic simulation of the spatial and temporal variability of burned areas is necessary in Earth system models (ESMs) and dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) to adequately assess current and future fire impacts on the Earth system.…”