The Impact of Boreal Forest Fire on Climate Warming

By J. Randerson, Heping Liu, Mark G. Flanner, S. Chambers, Yufang Jin, P. Hess, G. Pfister, Michelle C. Mack, K. Treseder, L. Welp and 7 more. Science, 2006

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We report measurements and analysis of a boreal forest fire, integrating the effects of greenhouse gases, aerosols, black carbon deposition on snow and sea ice, and postfire changes in surface albedo. The net effect of all agents was to increase radiative forcing during the first year (34 ± 31 Watts per square meter of burned area), but to decrease radiative forcing when averaged over an 80-year fire cycle (–2.3 ± 2.2 Watts per square meter) because multidecadal increases in surface albedo had a larger impact than fire-emitted greenhouse gases. This result implies that future increases in boreal fire may not accelerate climate warming.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d6d1a5ab39083f542e823f27877ba65f597b721a

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Citations in the corpus

Resilience and vulnerability of permafrost to climate change (2010, background): “…of the landscape by (i) decreasing the thickness of the insulating organic soil (Yoshikawa et al. 2003), (ii) increasing the reflectance, or albedo (Randerson et al. 2006; Euskirchen et al. 2010), and thereby reducing the solar insolation during both winter and summer, and (iii) decreasing snow…”
Characterizing canopy biochemistry from imaging spectroscopy and its application to ecosystem studies (2009, background): “Fire is a widespread disturbance to forest ecosystems and the global carbon cycle, impacting net primary production (Randerson et al., 2006), releasing stored carbon to the atmosphere as CO2 (Andreae and Merlet, 2001), and increasing release of carbon through post-fire decomposition of scorched…”
Disturbance and landscape dynamics in a changing world. (2010, background): “The feedback of black carbon to climate warming through forcing of sea ice and glacier albedo is also receiving increased attention; deposition of black carbon produced by boreal fires may enhance summer melting by reducing albedo (Kim et al. 2005, Randerson et al. 2006).”
Protecting climate with forests (2008, background): “Replacing snow with a surface that absorbs more sunlight, such as an evergreen spruce or pine canopy, warms the area at spatial scales of hundreds or even thousands of kilometers [12, 13 ].”
Focus on changing fire regimes: interactions with climate, ecosystems, and society (2020, background): “Because of the long period for forest regrowth to re-sequester lost carbon, and the amplified effects of fire aerosols and surface albedo in snowcovered systems, boreal forest fires exert a disproportionate influence on climate (Randerson et al 2006, Ward et al 2012, Oris et al 2013).”
A comparative assessment between linear and quadratic discriminant analyses (LDA-QDA) with frequency ratio and weights-of-evidence models for forest fire susceptibility mapping in China (2017, positive): “…°4 0' N 27 °4 0' N 27 °3 0' N 27 °3 0' N 27 °2 0' N 27 °2 0' N 27 °1 0' N 27 °1 0' N d Legend Training-Fire Topographic Wetness Index <9 9-13 >13 0 105 Kilometers As mentioned by Randerson et al. (2006), temperature is one of the most influencing factors on the…”
Ecosystem responses to recent climate change and fire disturbance at northern high latitudes: observations and model results contrasting northern Eurasia and North America (2007, background): “…over the first 40 years of succession, has higher rates of net production and biomass carbon accumulation (e.g. Goetz and Prince 1996, Kasischke and Johnstone 2005) and a longer sustained interval of high albedo values during spring than burned areas dominated by conifers (Randerson et al 2006).”
Resilience of Alaska's Boreal Forest to Climatic Change (2010, background): “This is slightly offset by an increase in area burned, which increases albedo in winter (less forest cover to obscure the snow) (Liu et al. 2005; Randerson et al. 2006) and in summer (shift to a lower-albedo deciduous forest trajectory) (Euskirchen et al.”
Biological and geophysical feedbacks with fire in the Earth system (2018, background): “global climate through emissions of greenhouse gases, aerosols and by changing land surface albedo (Kaufman and Fraser, 1997; Randerson et al., 2006; Ward et al., 2012).”
Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a changing world (2020, background): “Disturbances frequently shift albedo of ecosystems from darker to lighter, resulting in a decline in radiative forcing through less light absorption (137).”