24 November 2015, The Conversation, Feeding ‘Godzilla’: as Indonesia burns, its government moves to increase forest destruction. In the midst of its worst fire crisis in living memory, the Indonesian government is taking a leap backward on forest protection. The recently signed Council of Palm Oil Producing Nations between Indonesia and Malaysia, signed at the weekend in Kuala Lumpur, will attempt to wind back palm oil companies’ pledges to end deforestation. This is despite Indonesia’s efforts to end fires and palm oil cultivation on peatlands. If successful the move will undo recent attempts to end deforestation from palm oil production, and exacerbate the risk of future forest fires. Forests on fire Since August, forest and peatland fires have become so widespread across Indonesia that, in satellite images, the nation has looked like an over-lit Christmas tree. The fires have been so bad that carbon emissions from peatland burning alone (forgetting about the many thousands of additional forest fires) have equalled those produced by the entire United States Schools and airports have been repeatedly closed across large expanses of Southeast Asia. To reduce their risks, residents have been told to stay indoors. Some 500,000 people have so far suffered respiratory distress. Nearby Singapore has threatened legal action against several Indonesian companies whose activities have been linked to the fires, provoking a serious diplomatic spat between the two nations. Read More here
Tag Archives: Bushfire
30 October 2015, Renew Economy, With latest fires crisis, Indonesia surpasses Russia as world’s fourth-largest emitter. New analysis reveals even more troubling news about Indonesia’s fires crisis. Emissions from this year’s fires have reached 1.62 billion metric tons of CO2—bumping Indonesia from the sixth-largest emitter in the world up to the fourth-largest in just six weeks. The analysis from Guido van der Werf with the Global Fire Emissions Database also reveals that:
- Emissions from Indonesia’s fires alone are approaching the total annual emissions of Brazil.
- Indonesia’s current total emissions hover around 760 Mt CO2 (excluding land-use change), meaning the fires alone have tripled Indonesia’s entire annual emissions.
- Indonesian fires during 38 of the past 56 days (as of October 26) have released more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire U.S. economy on those days.
While the country may finally be getting some relief as heavy rainfall interruptsmonths of record-breaking fires and toxic smog in South Sumatra and Kalimantan, the damage to human health, the economy and the global climate has already been done. Read More here
28 October 2015, Climate News Network, Rise in wildfires depletes forests’ carbon store. As the world warms, the increasing hazard of forest fires is dangerously tilting trees’ carbon storage balance from positive to negative in some regions of Alaska. In a warming world, forest fires could be about to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the trees absorb. New research by US scientists looked at decades of wildfire incidence in Alaska, and they have found that at least one region is now a net exporter of carbon. This is a reversal of the normal arrangements, whereby trees photosynthesise tissue from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As they absorb carbon, they sequester it in roots, timber and leaves, and then in leaf litter in the forest soils. Fire is a natural hazard, and some geographical zones –the Mediterranean, the US southwest, and Australia – are adapted to periodic fire. But as the planet warms, there have been increasing levels of fire even in therainforests of the Amazon and in the boreal forests of the near-Arctic. Read More here
22 October 2015, Science Daily, Measuring the impacts of severe wildfires in the Arctic. Based on the number of acres burned, 2015 is shaping up to be the second most extreme fire year during the past decade in North America’s boreal region. Historically, the area has had one or fewer extreme fire years per decade. This season, 15 million acres burned in Alaska and Canada, according Northern Arizona University’s Michelle Mack, researcher and biological sciences professor, who is leading a NASA-funded project to measure the severe fire impacts in North America. “In the boreal region, there is a thick organic layer on the surface comprised of litter and soil, that in some cases is hundreds to thousands of years old,” Mack said. “Will more fires and hotter fires burn that layer and release it to the atmosphere and how deep will it burn into the soil?” These questions are part of NASA’s $100 million dollar, 10 year project called Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, also known as ABoVE. The experiment seeks to understand the vulnerability and resilience in the Arctic, where climate change is most pronounced and rapidly unfolding. Mack serves on the project’s international science team tasked with implementing the field campaign. Read More here