ScienceClimateAndEnergy.com

Russian Wildfires Emblematic of Broader Problem

August 11, 2010

Wildfire increases are a big potential climate change problem.  And rampant ones over parts of Russia, as the map below illustrates, have now lead to unhealthy levels of Carbon Monoxide over huge swaths of Russia — and for extended periods of time.

(map courtesy of NASA)

Huge amounts of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China, as shown by the map above  (covering a chunk of earth dwarfing the U.S. in size), currently have over 200 parts per billion CO concentration, which is still below, for example the U.S.’s maximum exposure concentration of 9 parts per million over any eight hour period (“not,” according to the EPA, “to be exceeded more than once per year”); but these concentrations have been for days on end. And in some city locations, particularly Moscow, levels have been excessive; five times higher than acceptable levels, according to Moscow’s environmental protection agency.

Wildfires are an associated risk of climate change, as Moscow is currently experiencing its worst heat wave in 130 years, and has broken its all time temperature record. (Not to worry though, these — along with all the other compelling increases in both the overall number of temperature record highs being set, as well as the increasing number of heat wave and extended precipitation records — are all just completely coincidental “natural environmental cycles.”  Don’t think so? Just ask one of the country’s leading scientists and geophysicist/climatological and ecological experts, former half term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, and her official promoter of misinformation as “fair and balanced,” the Washington Post.)

What is also interesting about the Russian wildfires is that they are in part peat bog fires. And, frozen in the Russian peat bogs, which all together cover roughly 600,000 square kilometers (about 230,000 square miles, an area just under the size of Texas), lies massive amounts of methane; a gas which, averaged out over a hundred year period, traps approximately 23x more heat than carbon dioxide (and, over a shorter period, much more than that.)

As Russia warms, those long frozen bogs start to unfreeze. And in the process, the methane trapped there, is no longer trapped, but released into the atmosphere.