Are wildfires warming the atmosphere?
It is summer, and Mika and I have been enjoying basking in the sun. Well we were enjoying it, but the sun never seemed to go away. The heat has been inescapable and has been drying out the land. Last week, when we were riding on a train towards Cologne, we went past a huge fire burning in a forest. The flames were as tall as houses and the thick black smoke rose high up into the cloudless sky. I could almost feel the heat from inside the train, and this made me think – do wildfires heat up the atmosphere?
Once we got off the train I phoned up some meteorologist friends at the University of Cologne to ask them about how the flames from the wildfires are affecting the atmosphere. I was surprised by just how complicated the effects of wildfires are on the atmosphere. The heat released by all of those flames does indeed heat up the air in the surrounding area and increases evaporation from the ground and vegetation. The heated air rises like a huge hot air balloon, transporting smoke from the fire, and moisture from the surface high into the sky. If the hot air rises enough, it can form big storm clouds, meaning the fires can trigger their own weather events!
My friends at the university told me to look up into the sky. As the sun was beginning to set over Cologne, the sun turned the clouds in the sky a beautiful shade of pink. I was shocked then to be told that these were not normal clouds – but smoke produced from a wildfire burning over 100 km away! They told me that the smoke I had seen from the fire through the train window can travel for hundreds, if not thousands of kilometres. With it, the smoke transports greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants around the planet. As I had learned before, greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere. So this means that not only the heat from the fire itself warms the local environment, but the gases released contribute to the warming of the planet!
Learning all of this got me quite worried, as I had heard that the dry summer has meant that wildfires are particularly bad this year. I asked my friends if there is anything I should do to minimise the risk of fires this summer. They told me that we should only have barbecues far away from places with dry vegetation, as even a small ember could ignite the parched leaves. Also, if anyone sees a wildfire starting, they should immediately contact the fire department so it can be quickly extinguished.
I do love to have a barbecue in the sun – who doesn’t?! But after talking with my friends, I think Mika and I can wait until after it has rained to grill our skewers.
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Text: James Panton, Illustration: Patrizia Schoch