Center for Global Environmental Research, Earth System Division, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 15;11(1):8267. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-87721-x.
Catastrophic fires occurred in Australia between 2019 and 2020. These fires burned vast areas and caused extensive damage to the environment and wildlife. In this study, we estimated the carbon dioxide (CO) emissions from these fires using a bottom-up method involving the improved burnt area approach and up-to-date remote sensing datasets to create monthly time series distribution maps for Australia from January 2019 to February 2020. The highest monthly CO emissions in Australia since 2001 were recorded in December 2019. The estimated annual CO emissions from March 2019 to February 2020 in Australia were 806 ± 69.7 Tg CO year, equivalent to 1.5 times its total greenhouse gas emissions (CO equivalent) in 2017. New South Wales (NSW) emitted 181 ± 10.2 Tg CO month in December 2019 alone, representing 64% of the average annual emissions of Australia from 2001-2018. The negative correlation observed between CO emissions and precipitation for 2001-2020 was 0.51 for Australia. Lower than average precipitation and fires in high biomass density areas caused significant CO emissions. This study helps to better assess the performance of climate models as a case study of one of the major events caused by climate.
澳大利亚在 2019 年至 2020 年间发生了灾难性火灾。这些火灾燃烧了大片地区，对环境和野生动植物造成了广泛的破坏。在本研究中，我们使用自下而上的方法，结合改进的燃烧面积方法和最新的遥感数据集，估算了这些火灾的二氧化碳（CO）排放量，为 2019 年 1 月至 2020 年 2 月的澳大利亚创建了每月时间序列分布地图。自 2001 年以来，澳大利亚 12 月记录到的月度 CO 排放量最高。估算的 2019 年 3 月至 2020 年 2 月澳大利亚的年 CO 排放量为 806±69.7TgCOyr，相当于其 2017 年温室气体总排放量（CO 当量）的 1.5 倍。仅 2019 年 12 月，新南威尔士州（NSW）就排放了 181±10.2TgCO，占澳大利亚 2001-2018 年平均年排放量的 64%。2001-2020 年澳大利亚 CO 排放量与降水之间的负相关系数为 0.51。低于平均水平的降水和高生物质密度地区的火灾导致了大量的 CO 排放。本研究有助于更好地评估气候模型的性能，为评估气候引发的重大事件之一提供了案例研究。
