Future fire – still a wide open climate question
How the frequency and intensity of wildfires and intentional biomass burning will change in a future climate requires closer scientific attention, according to CSIRO’s Dr Melita Keywood.
5 July 2011
Dr Keywood said it is likely that fire – one of nature’s primary carbon-cycling mechanisms – will become an increasingly important driver of atmospheric change as the world warms.
“Understanding changes in the occurrence and magnitude of fires will be an important challenge for which there needs to be a clear focus on the tools and methodologies available to scientists to predict fire occurrence in a changing climate.”
She said the link between long-term climate change and short-term variability in fire activity is complex, with multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks. (CSIRO press release)
“Dr Keywood said it is likely that fire – one of nature’s primary carbon-cycling mechanisms – will become an increasingly important driver of atmospheric change as the world warms.”
Fire (including fossil fuel use) is only part of one step in the carbon cycle. It is only likely to become important if it manages to increase in its contribution to carbon cycling beyond the contributions of other mechanisms such as composting, acid erosion of carbonate minerals, or metabolism to the increase of atmospheric CO2.
Fire fire to increase CO2 enough to become a ‘primary driver of climate change’ would take a conflagration on a continental scale, at which time ‘global warming’ becomes an insignificant problem in comparison to global darkening, particulate pollution, rain acidification, world-wide crop failures, ashfalls, etc.