Large Scale Global Wildfires and its Climate Impact

[bugalou]

With the enormous wildfires in Australia earlier this year and now the absolutely massive plum of smoke being generated from the widespread fires on the west coast of North America, I was curious if there have been any studies on short term (~12-24 months) impacts of smoke and particulates being injected into the atmosphere at this scale.  When I saw the Australian fires it was the largest smoke plum I have ever seen on satellite in my 30 years or so of paying attention to weather and wildfires.  Then that was topped just this week seeing the huge (and very deep) smoke plum from the fires in the west.  I know wildfires happen every year globally, but these two events were both huge and that's on top of all the other smaller wild fires and volcanic eruptions.   I also know wildfires can inject particulates into the stratosphere which can take much longer to filter out versus those lower down.  I am curious what kind of impacts this could have on the climate (if any) for the next several months. 

 

I have searched Google for this but haven't been able to find much since the wildfires here in the US are ongoing so the results are mostly news and health related impacts.  If anyone here has papers or studies I would love for you to share.

[donsutherland1]

On 9/12/2020 at 2:35 PM, bugalou said:

With the enormous wildfires in Australia earlier this year and now the absolutely massive plum of smoke being generated from the widespread fires on the west coast of North America, I was curious if there have been any studies on short term (~12-24 months) impacts of smoke and particulates being injected into the atmosphere at this scale.  When I saw the Australian fires it was the largest smoke plum I have ever seen on satellite in my 30 years or so of paying attention to weather and wildfires.  Then that was topped just this week seeing the huge (and very deep) smoke plum from the fires in the west.  I know wildfires happen every year globally, but these two events were both huge and that's on top of all the other smaller wild fires and volcanic eruptions.   I also know wildfires can inject particulates into the stratosphere which can take much longer to filter out versus those lower down.  I am curious what kind of impacts this could have on the climate (if any) for the next several months. 

 

I have searched Google for this but haven't been able to find much since the wildfires here in the US are ongoing so the results are mostly news and health related impacts.  If anyone here has papers or studies I would love for you to share.

Unfortunately, aside from literature concerning short-term impacts, I'm not aware of any literature concerning longer-term impacts. There is some literature that fires burning through the peat in the Arctic release a lot of greenhouse gases.

[LibertyBell]

3 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

Unfortunately, aside from literature concerning short-term impacts, I'm not aware of any literature concerning longer-term impacts. There is some literature that fires burning through the peat in the Arctic release a lot of greenhouse gases.

Sudden methane release would be an ELE (extinction level event)....it has happened in the past and caused mass extinctions....

[donsutherland1]

On 9/12/2020 at 2:35 PM, bugalou said:

With the enormous wildfires in Australia earlier this year and now the absolutely massive plum of smoke being generated from the widespread fires on the west coast of North America, I was curious if there have been any studies on short term (~12-24 months) impacts of smoke and particulates being injected into the atmosphere at this scale.  When I saw the Australian fires it was the largest smoke plum I have ever seen on satellite in my 30 years or so of paying attention to weather and wildfires.  Then that was topped just this week seeing the huge (and very deep) smoke plum from the fires in the west.  I know wildfires happen every year globally, but these two events were both huge and that's on top of all the other smaller wild fires and volcanic eruptions.   I also know wildfires can inject particulates into the stratosphere which can take much longer to filter out versus those lower down.  I am curious what kind of impacts this could have on the climate (if any) for the next several months. 

 

I have searched Google for this but haven't been able to find much since the wildfires here in the US are ongoing so the results are mostly news and health related impacts.  If anyone here has papers or studies I would love for you to share.

Courtesy of a paper noted by @snowman19 here’s a link to a paper that might be of interest:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0039-3

[bugalou]

4 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Courtesy of a paper noted by @snowman19 here’s a link to a paper that might be of interest:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0039-3

What a great paper!  Thank you for sharing.  I came out surprised that the impact of wildfires may not be a subtle as I first expected  based on that paper.  Based on the paper, some relatively 'medium' wildfire events can be compared to a Volcanic Eruptions on the VEI scale of 3 to 4.  We are of course talking minor decimal numbers short term in climate temperature impact, but still much more than I expected.  PyroCb activity seems to be a key to the smoke's longevity as it injects parts of it directly into the stratosphere. Considering the huge amount of smoke and vigorous PyroCb activity in both the NA west coast fires and Austrialian fires, total injected smoke and particulates into the stratosphere was likely exceptionally high (though I'd love to see numbers if anyone has started to tackle that yet). It will be interesting to see what effects if any it will have on short term climate trends in both hemispheres.

[snowman19]

6 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

Courtesy of a paper noted by @snowman19 here’s a link to a paper that might be of interest:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0039-3

The current western wildfires getting into the stratosphere would seemingly support a +AO winter.