In one summer, fires in Siberia, Canada and Alaska caused a quarter of CO emissions2 attributable to forest fires in 2021, twice the average since 2000.
Due to long periods of repeated heat waves and a significant lack of rain, fires ignited many forests in Western Europe last summer. But, for the climate, the impact of these disasters will be limited. European forest areas are fragmented by roads and firefighters contain the extent of the damage. The situation is far more worrying for fires in boreal forests, over a wide strip of the Northern Hemisphere that extends over nearly 15,000 kilometers in length. These are mainly the taiga in Russia and the forests of northern Canada and Alaska. When the fires start there, it is difficult to stop them. And their contribution, in the summer of 2021, to global warming has been considerable. Fires in the taiga and Canadian boreal forests released an estimated 480 million tonnes of carbon, or 23% of emissions from all wildfires that year, according to an article published in Science Thursday, March 3. That’s twice as much as…
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