Human-Caused Tropical Forest Fires Bigger GHG Source Than Thought

[hatrack]

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""The one thing we've learned is that fires are more important ... than we thought to the amount of greenhouse gases," staff scientist G. James Collatz of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told United Press International. If so, this factor raises important questions about future trends in climate change and in the role of the tropics, either as a sink or a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, he said.

Collatz was a member of a Goddard research team, led by scientist Guido van der Werf, that used satellite data and climate modeling to study the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and methane variations and the drought-related fires that occurred during the 1997-1998 El Niño event.

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In a paper in the Jan. 9 issue of the journal Science, the van der Werf group wrote: "Our analysis reaffirmed the importance of fires in Southeast Asia, but also identified fires from other regions as substantial contributors to CO2 ... anomalies during 1997 to 2001. This work suggests that the variability and intensity of El Niño may be one of the most critical components of climate regulating future carbon loss. It also indicates that regions that have long served as carbon sinks may suddenly become sources."

As Collatz told UPI: "The other interesting twist is that in the boreal forests, the fires are usually from a natural phenomenon. But they only produce about 10 percent of the excess CO2. A large majority comes from the tropics, and there it is humans taking advantage of fire conditions -- humans are going to drive a large part of the activity."

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http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040105-034636-2423r