- Scientists have discovered that smoke and dust from fires in mid-latitudes is spreading all the way to the Arctic.
- This substance can accelerate the melting of ice, which in turn can warm the atmosphere.
- This discovery may have a profound impact on the climate crisis.
- For more stories, please visit Business Insider.
In the past few years, wildfires have been brutal and may have wider effects than initially realized.
A huge flame sends soot particles into the atmosphere, and they are taken to the North Pole, where they may also exacerbate warming there.
New research shows that this impact may be more profound than previously thought.
“As global warming accelerates, the amount and scale of biomass burning is increasing,” Sho Ohata, associate professor of environmental research at Nagoya University in Japan, told Insider.
The particles in the soot from these fires are called “black carbon.” Experts told Insider that scientists are trying to understand how their emissions change the way global temperatures rise.
Black carbon on white ice
The temperature in the Arctic is rising Twice as fast As the global average temperature.
The Arctic ice cap is like a huge earth visor: it reflects a lot of sunlight back into space.
When it disappears, the sun warms the earth and helps Global temperature rise.
Scientific model It has been predicted that by the middle of this century, the Arctic will be completely ice-free in summer.
Based on a study published in a peer-reviewed journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics on ThursdayOhata contributed to this, and current climate models underestimate the contribution of wildfires to black carbon in the Arctic atmosphere by a factor of three.
Makoto Koike, associate professor of earth and planetary physics at the University of Tokyo, told Insider that the main driver of global warming is carbon dioxide emissions. Koike is also the author of this study.
“But black carbon may also accelerate the rapid rise in temperature, and there is a very large uncertainty… We cannot say, for example, [if] Will the wildfires burning in California this year affect the Arctic?
“But we need to be aware that this may happen, even if we don’t know it,” he said.
What we know are fires in mid-latitudes, like those from Zombie Siberian Wildfire And those who ravage North America year after year will spit out the black carbon that enters the Arctic.
“The Arctic has been greatly affected because these emission sources are very close, while the Antarctic is much further away,” Markus Frey, a senior scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, told Insider.
Experts told Insider that one of the indisputable effects of black carbon is that when it darkens the ice, the ice is more likely to melt.
There is more uncertainty about whether black carbon will also warm the atmosphere.
Mikael Hildén, Professor of Environmental Policy Studies at the Finnish Environmental Institute, author A recent Arctic Council report on black carbon, Tell Insider that its effect can be cut in both directions.
Hilden said, such as forest fires, Can release sulfur next to black carbon, Which may reflect light back into space and actually cool the atmosphere.
Two humpback whales swim together in the Arctic Ocean iceberg in Ilulissat, Greenland.
If this effect exceeds other warming effects, it may not be so bad for the planet.
But Ohata says that other particles that make up black carbon can be coated with chemicals to make them more absorbent, which means they emit more heat.
“Depending on the source of black carbon and different proportions, this may be a cooling effect and a warming effect,” Hilden said.
“The current consensus seems to tend to say that there is a net warming effect,” he said.
