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Simulating Impacts of Ice Storms on Forest Ecosystems
Published on: June 30, 2020
Canadian wildfires are losing their climate-cooling influence from postfire snow albedo
Max J van Gerrevink1,2, Alemu Gonsamo3, Brendan M Rogers4
1Earth and Climate, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1081HV, the Netherlands.
None:
The 2023 Canadian fire season was record-breaking in terms of burned area and carbon emissions. Here, we present estimates of the regional climate-cooling effect from postfire surface albedo changes, which have historically partially offset the warming influence of fire emissions by wildfires. We estimate that the 2023 fires generated a time-integrated climate cooling of -3.41 W m-2 of burned area (95% CI: -4.39 to -2.43) over a 70-y period. We show that the climate-cooling impact has weakened on average by 29% since the 1960s due to changes in snow cover and duration. Collectively, this result implies that modern-day boreal fires are on average twice as likely to result in a net climate-warming influence.
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