Forest fire size amplifies postfire land surface warming

Climate warming has caused a widespread increase in extreme fire weather, making forest fires longer-lived and larger 1 – 3 . The average forest fire size in Canada, the USA and Australia has doubled or even tripled in recent decades 4 , 5 . In return, forest fires feed back to climate by modulating...

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Veröffentlicht in:Nature (London) Jg. 633; H. 8031; S. 828 - 834
Hauptverfasser: Zhao, Jie, Yue, Chao, Wang, Jiaming, Hantson, Stijn, Wang, Xianli, He, Binbin, Li, Guangyao, Wang, Liang, Zhao, Hongfei, Luyssaert, Sebastiaan
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: London Nature Publishing Group UK 26.09.2024
Nature Publishing Group
Schlagworte:
704/106/694
704/158/2465
Biogeochemistry
Boreal forests
Carbon aerosols
Climate
Climate change
Coniferous forests
Cooling
Datasets
Energy
Environmental risk
Extreme weather
Feedback
Fire weather
Forest & brush fires
Forest fires
Forest management
Forestry
Forestry - methods
Forestry - trends
Forests
Future climates
Global warming
Global Warming - statistics & numerical data
Heat
Hot Temperature
Humanities and Social Sciences
Land management
multidisciplinary
Northern Hemisphere
Permafrost
Radiation
Satellite observation
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Seasons
Soil degradation
Surface temperature
Taiga
Time Factors
Trees
Trees - anatomy & histology
Trees - classification
Trees - growth & development
Trees - metabolism
Wildfires - statistics & numerical data
Canada
United States > US
North America
ISSN:0028-0836, 1476-4687, 1476-4687
Online-Zugang:Volltext
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Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Climate warming has caused a widespread increase in extreme fire weather, making forest fires longer-lived and larger 1 – 3 . The average forest fire size in Canada, the USA and Australia has doubled or even tripled in recent decades 4 , 5 . In return, forest fires feed back to climate by modulating land–atmospheric carbon, nitrogen, aerosol, energy and water fluxes 6 – 8 . However, the surface climate impacts of increasingly large fires and their implications for land management remain to be established. Here we use satellite observations to show that in temperate and boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere, fire size persistently amplified decade-long postfire land surface warming in summer per unit burnt area. Both warming and its amplification with fire size were found to diminish with an increasing abundance of broadleaf trees, consistent with their lower fire vulnerability compared with coniferous species 9 , 10 . Fire-size-enhanced warming may affect the success and composition of postfire stand regeneration 11 , 12 as well as permafrost degradation 13 , presenting previously overlooked, additional feedback effects to future climate and fire dynamics. Given the projected increase in fire size in northern forests 14 , 15 , climate-smart forestry should aim to mitigate the climate risks of large fires, possibly by increasing the share of broadleaf trees, where appropriate, and avoiding active pyrophytes. Climate warming has increased forest fire sizes, amplifying postfire summer warming, with broadleaf trees mitigating this effect; climate-smart forestry should increase broadleaf tree cover to manage future fire risks.
Bibliographie:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/s41586-024-07918-8