Phillips Carly A, Rogers Brendan M, Elder Molly, Cooperdock Sol, Moubarak Michael, Randerson James T, Frumhoff Peter C
Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA.
Sci Adv. 2022 Apr 29;8(17):eabl7161. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abl7161. Epub 2022 Apr 27.
Wildfires in boreal forests release large quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change. Here, we characterize the magnitude of recent and projected gross and net boreal North American wildfire carbon dioxide emissions, evaluate fire management as an emissions reduction strategy, and quantify the associated costs. Our results show that wildfires in boreal North America could, by mid-century, contribute to a cumulative net source of nearly 12 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, about 3% of remaining global carbon dioxide emissions associated with keeping temperatures within the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C limit. With observations from Alaska, we show that current fire management practices limit the burned area. Further, the costs of avoiding carbon dioxide emissions by means of increasing investment in fire management are comparable to or lower than those of other mitigation strategies. Together, our findings highlight the climate risk that boreal wildfires pose and point to fire management as a cost-effective way to limit emissions.
北方森林的野火向大气中释放大量温室气体，加剧了气候变化。在此，我们描述了近期及预计的北美北方森林野火二氧化碳排放总量和净排放量的规模，评估了火灾管理作为一种减排策略的效果，并对相关成本进行了量化。我们的结果表明，到本世纪中叶，北美北方森林的野火可能会导致近120亿吨二氧化碳的累计净排放源，约占为将温度控制在《巴黎协定》1.5°C限制内而产生的全球剩余二氧化碳排放量的3%。通过阿拉斯加的观测数据，我们表明当前的火灾管理措施限制了过火面积。此外，通过增加火灾管理投资来避免二氧化碳排放的成本与其他缓解策略相当或更低。我们的研究结果共同凸显了北方森林野火带来的气候风险，并指出火灾管理是一种具有成本效益的减排方式。
