Arctic Wildfire Soot Darkening Greenland Ice Sheet


Arctic Wildfire Soot Darkening Greenland Ice Sheet

06 December 2012

published by www.ouramazingplanet.com


USA/Greenland — The glittering, icy landscape of Greenland is being marred by soot that falls from the smoke plumes of Arctic wildfires, new satellite-based research shows. That soot darkens the surface of the ice and makes it absorb more sunlight, hastening its melt.

Researchers caught what they say are the first direct images of wildfire smoke drifting over Greenland this past summer with NASA’s Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite, which they presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Rising global temperatures are already contributing to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which experienced record melt this year and its warmest summer in 170 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card. Other research presented at the meeting reported that Greenland’s ice loss is accelerating by 22 gigatons (22 cubic kilometers) of ice a year, with some areas, particularly the edges, losing ice faster than others.

Because meltwater is less reflective than ice, the surface of the ice sheet is already absorbing more sunlight — previous research found that the reflectivity of the Greenland ice has dropped by 6 percent in the last decade, according to an Ohio State University release on the new research.

This summer, in fact, virtually the entire surface veneer of the Greenland ice sheet melted in a matter of days, something that Ohio State researcher Jason Box, who worked on the CALIPSO research, says could start happening every summer.

Now, adding to the darkening of the surface that comes with more meltwater is the soot from Arctic tundra wildfires, another phenomenon that seems to be increasing with global warming. As these wildfires rage, atmospheric currents carry their smoke plumes over other areas, including Greenland, as the CALIPSO images show. The soot drops out from these plumes and darkens the ice sheet, exacerbating the feedback cycle of melting.

Box and his colleagues investigated the impact of these wildfires on Greenland by first using thermal images from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to find the tundra fires. Computer models were used to project where the smoke from the fires would go, and they suggested that it could, in fact, reach Greenland.

Armed with that information, the team looked at CALIPSO data and found evidence of the smoke over Greenland.

Just how much the soot from this smoke is impacting Greenland’s melting can’t be gleaned from the satellite data, though. To figure this out will take direct sampling of the ice sheet; Box is already organizing an expedition, dubbed The Dark Snow Project, for 2013, to the ice sheet to get these samples.
 The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement

Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.

But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.

Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmafUgo3
 The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement

Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.

But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.

Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmafUgo3
 The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement

Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.

But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.

Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmafUgo3
 Two summers of unprecedented rain and unusually cool temperatures have left a large fuel load of grass and unburnt forest areas in and around Canberra.

A network of 500 fire trails and strategic burns along the north-west urban edge, heavy grazing and extra grass slashing will create a fortress for the territory which forecasters say faces a higher than average risk this summer.

After a fire-fuelled tornado in January 2003 killed four Canberrans and frightened thousands more, CSIRO fire expert Phil Cheney told the subsequent inquiry the fire’s penetration into urban areas under extreme conditions did not reflect a failure of fuel management on the urban interface.

Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmaXNjum
 The failure was in the forest areas.Advertisement

Following a 10-year strategy, ACT fire managers have created a mosaic across the landscape of different fuel levels, burning at every opportunity.

But forests have been too wet to burn this spring and the past two summers.

Read more:http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/red-alert-for-high-risk-of-fires-20121118-29koa.html#ixzz2CmafUgo3
 


 

 

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