Study Finds That Fires Are Accelerating Climate Change

Carbon dioxide emitted by fires worldwide is accelerating climate change, which in turn is causing more fires, a vicious cycle that is becoming increasingly damaging to the environment, according to a new report. While scientists had realized that a warmer world leads to more fires, the new research, published in the journal Science, confirms that those fires are releasing huge amounts of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere — an amount about equal to 50 percent of the emissions generated by the burning of fossil fuels. The fires include massive deforestation projects in places like the Amazon, where stretches of forest are torched to create space for pasture. “The scary bit is that, because of the feedbacks and other uncertainties, we could be way underestimating the role of fire in driving future climate change,” said Thomas Swetman, a researcher at the University of Arizona and co-author of the report. The authors say the significant role of fire has not been considered when creating models on how climate will change, and called on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to pay closer attention to fire impacts in future modeling.