Climate Central has an interesting report on a trend of increasing wildfires in the Arctic region of Alaska.
In the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the country, with average temperatures up by nearly 3°F. By 2050, temperatures are projected to climb an additional 2-4 degrees, with the Arctic region seeing the most dramatic increases. These rising temperatures are expected to increase wildfire risks in Alaska, just as they have in the rest of the western U.S. Wildfires have been on the rise across the western U.S. since the 1970s, at the same time that spring and summer temperatures have increased dramatically, and average spring snowpack has declined substantially. Fires in Alaska don’t often make news in the lower 48, but they threaten vast expanses of forest, parkland, and tundra that store immense quantities of carbon. The state’s growing number of large wildfires have the potential to damage these ecosystems, and the people and wildlife that depend on them, while releasing a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere, further contributing to global warming. Wildfire emissions over these vast areas also threaten air quality in Alaska and beyond.
They attribute the trend to higher temperatures in May, June, and July, while at the same time there has been no clear trend in rainfall during these months. So it is getting hotter and, if not dryer, at least not any wetter. It makes sense that higher temperatures would dry out wood, dead vegetation, and organic soils, increasing the amount fuel available for fires. I don’t know what exactly starts the fires, maybe lightning. The scariest thing in this report is the idea of a self-reinforcing feedback loop between thawing permafrost, burning forests and organic soils, greenhouse gas emissions, and higher temperatures. I suspect if this is going on in Alaska, it is also going on in other parts of the Arctic – Canada, northern Europe, and Russia.
