31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 21A WAVE of warm weather hit the
UK in February and three huge
fires broke out in different parts
of the country. In fact, the period
between June 2018 and June
2019 was a “really crazy year”
for wildfires, says Thomas
Smith at the London School of
Economics. The UK has had 95
large wildfires in 2019 already.
In the Arctic, it is often forests
that burn (see main story). In the
UK, peat and heathland blazes
are the main problem. “There is
potential once the fire is in thepeat of it being protracted. It’s a
more difficult fire to deal with,”
says Paul Hedley at the National
Fire Chiefs Council.
Since the 2018 moorland fires
near Manchester, the UK’s worst
in decades, the country’s fire and
rescue service has trained
35 staff nationally as wildfire
tactical advisers, to pool expertise
and aid coordination. Despite
this, wildfires are a growing
burden. “There is no way of
getting around it, it is a real
challenge for us,” says Hedley.Fires in February
helicopters to tackle flames
in some areas. “Large-scale
intervention is very costly and
not very effective for large and
remote fires,” says Cristina Santín
at Swansea University, UK.
Russian authorities have tried
seeding clouds to induce rain.
The idea is that planes spray
chemicals such as silver iodide
in an effort to enhance the rate
of ice crystal formation in the
atmosphere, producing more
clouds, but there is no evidence
this is effective.
Today, firefighters’ priority is to
protect life and property. Turetskysays that could in future be
extended to protecting rich stores
of carbon in the Arctic. “It might
be governments come together
to protect certain areas where we
understand where the old carbon
is,” she says. The other thing we
can do is to reduce CO 2 emissions.
In the future, hotter, drier
conditions in the Arctic will set
the stage for more blazes. A recent
report on land use by the UN’s
climate science panel warned as
much. Stephen Pyne, who studies
the history of fire at Arizona State
University, says we are entering
the “age of the pyrocene”.
One crumb of comfort is that
the feedback loop can’t continue
forever. Once forest is burned, it
can’t keep burning. And smoke
from northern fires has a modest
cooling effect, reflecting some of
the sun’s energy. In the meantime,
however, the Arctic is still on fire. ❚away an insulating layer that helps
maintain permafrost – ground
that is normally frozen. This
makes it more likely that the
permafrost could thaw and
release even more CO 2. Permafrost
thaws discharge not just CO 2 ,
but also the more powerful
greenhouse gas methane.
The potential positive feedback
doesn’t end there. Researchers at
CAMS have already used satellites
to track soot from this year’s
northern Russia fires. Some landed
on ice in Greenland. That matters
because studies have shown that
soot can alter the reflectivity of ice,
making it absorb more of the sun’s
energy and heat up.
The remote nature and sheer
scale of the Arctic means there
isn’t a lot that firefighters can
do about these fires. Russia had
to send in the army, planes andfumes to turn air quality from
average to poor, potentially
causing respiratory problems
for young, old and other
vulnerable people.
The health costs aren’t just
physical. Turetsky says that in
Yellowknife, the capital of the
Northwest Territories in Canada,
doctors have reported increasing
rates of hospital admissions for
post-traumatic stress disorder
during and following wildfires.
At a workshop she ran in the city,
many people reported what they
called eco anxiety. “A lot of these
people didn’t experience the fires
directly, but they know it’s going
to come back,” says Turetsky.
The effect on the climate could
be more serious still. The problem
isn’t simply that fires release a lot
of CO 2. This will exacerbate global
warming, and Arctic wildfires have
released about the same amount
of CO 2 this year as the Netherlands
does in a year.
“For me what is far more
insidious is the long-term
climate impact,” says Phillips.
Her worry is the prospect of a
harmful positive feedback loop.
Fires burn off vegetation, stripping
▲ Kakapo
The birds are back in
town. For the first time in
70 years, the number of
kakapos, New Zealand’s
giant parrots, has hit 200.▲ Chunky chips
Ever wished microchips
were larger? Then
Cerebras Systems’s
(macro) chip could be for
you. It is as big as an iPad
and will be used for AI.▼ Fogcam
Farewell to the world’s
oldest running webcam.
Fogcam had recorded
weather in San Francisco
since 1994, but will be
shut down because its
owners say there are no
good places to put it.▼ Cruelty
YouTube removed videos
of robots fighting each
other for defying animal
(not android) cruelty rules.▼ Practice
A study found that good
violinists practise just as
much as even better ones,
suggesting the phrase
practice makes perfect is
far from perfect after all.Working
hypothesis
Sorting the week’s
supernovae from the
absolute zerosMore Insight online
Your guide to a rapidly changing world
newscientist.com/insight173
megatonnes of CO 2 emitted from
fires in the Arctic so far in 2019Russia’s
Aerial Forest
Protection
Service battled
fires earlier this
monthTA
SS
VIAGETT
Y^Read about geoengineering efforts
to refreeze the Arctic on page 38 BY
_NICHOL
AS/GETTY;^ TOP:^ ROSS
HENR
Y/ALA
MY