“Too Furious For Human Intervention” — Climate Feedbacks Spur Out of Control Wildfires From Indonesia to Brazil
21
October, 2015
There
is “no
way human intervention can put out the fires,”
Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, Malaysia’s Minister of Natural Resources
and Environment, to the Australian Broadcasting Company on the issue
of Indonesian wildfires in a recent Weather
Channel Report.
*****
Outbreaks
of Equatorial wildfires. It’s something that can happen during
strong El Ninos. These periods of warming in the Equatorial Pacific
can set off a chain of events leading to dangerous heatwaves,
droughts and wildfires breaking out all over the Earth’s
mid-section.
But
put a strong El Nino into the context of the overall human-forced
warming of the global environment by 1 C hotter than 1880s values and
you start to get into some serious trouble. The added heat amplifies
the warming already being set off by El Nino conditions, it worsens
droughts, and it provides an environment for some ridiculously
intense wildfire outbreaks. Outbreaks of a strength and ferocity we
would not have seen had we not forced the world to warm by so much.
(Copernicus’s
Atmospheric Monitoring Service [CAMS] shows very intense point source
CO2 emissions from wildfires now raging out of control in the Amazon
and in Indonesia. These massive fires have been set off due to a
combination of poor land use practices and excessive heat and and
drought spurred by El Nino and the added heating effect of
human-forced climate change. Image source: CAMS.)
Over
the past month, very intense and widespread wildfires have been
breaking out in two heavily forested Equatorial regions — the
Amazon and Indonesia. You can see the point source CO2 emissions for
these fires in the CAMS
graphic above.
And what we see is that current emissions from these wildfires now
exceeds that of the massive industrial Northern Hemisphere sources.
In
essence, the vast carbon stores contained in the forested regions of
the Amazon and Indonesia are burning and releasing into the
atmosphere. This burning is due, in substantial part, to the added
heat human fossil fuel based industry has forced into the global
climate system. Thus, these extraordinary fires are the very
definition of an amplifying feedback. And they will likely result in
net global carbon emissions from all sources hitting a pretty extreme
spike for 2015.
In 1997 Indonesian drought and forest fires increased global CO2 emissions by 13-40 percent. In 2010 Amazon drought and forest fires increased global antropogenic CO2 emissions (energy and land use!) by an estimated 25 percent.
Given
these ominous precedents, and given the extent of Equatorial
wildfires in rainforest regions this year, we may see increases in
global emissions hit or even exceed the ranges mentioned above.
11,000
Forest Fires in Brazil So Far
Last
year, during one of Brazil’s worst droughts on record, more than
7,000 wildfires raged over Brazil’s forested regions. The rate of
burning was so great that
many scientists and environmentalists wondered if human warming was
already starting to take down the massive and majestic rainforest —
an impact that was not considered likely until the earth warmed up by
another 1-3 degrees C on top of the heat forcing we’ve already
provided.
But
though the Amazon was left smoldering after a terrible drought and
wildfire outbreak last year, the damage continued to increase through
2015. By
early October, and with nearly 3 months of 2015 still remaining, more
than 11,000 wildfires were reported to have burned in Brazil and the
Amazon — a 47 percent increase in the number of wildfires from the
severe burning of 2014.
A stark statistic that will only grow worse as El Nino continues to
spike global and Equatorial temperatures into new record ranges. A
wretched example of how human-forced climate change can really turn
El Nino into a monstrous weather phenomena.
(Smoke
from Amazon wildfires visible in the October 18,2015 LANCE MODIS
satellite shot. Image source: LANCE
MODIS.)
As
with the ongoing water shortage disaster in Sao Paulo,
mainstream media accounts of this massive wildfire outbreak in Brazil
have been sparse. However, given the fact that we have a near 50
percent increase in the rate of burning from last year’s terrible
base-line, we can only imagine that conditions on the ground in
Brazil and in the Amazon are rather dire.
Huge
Areas of Indonesia Burning — Some Fires Too Intense to Fight
Though
the rate of Amazon burning is massive, but obscure in media reports,
similarly immense Indonesia wildfires on the other side of the globe
suffer no lack of media attention.Just
24 minutes ago, a report from The Weather Channel cited officials
stating that some of the fires in region were now “too intense for
human intervention.”
There,
fires are so intense that smoke from them has forced the cancellation
of flights, school children have been asked to stay home to avoid
hazardous air, and the country is calling in firefighting forces from
all over the globe. Malaysia, Singapore, and even Russia have
contributed firefighting aircraft to the cause. But as of now, there
appears little that can be done to help an out of control fire
situation that has left a vast region sweltering under a hot, dense
cloud of smoke.
“The
government has tried hard to extinguish the wildfires across the
country,” said Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Minister Siti
Nurbaya in
a report to AP,
“but it has gotten out of control.”
(NASA
Rapid Response MODIS satellite image shows very dense plumes of smoke
rising off massive burn areas over Indonesia today. Smoke coverage
was so dense that health warnings were issued, flights canceled, and
school children sent home. With fires now raging out of control the
best hope is the arrival of the mid-November rains. But added
Equatorial heat due to El Nino and human-forced warming may force
hot, dry conditions to remain in place. Image source: Rapid
Response.)
An
annual outbreak of wildfires has now become commonplace in Indonesia
where corporations illegally burn to clear away forested land for
Palm Oil and other crops. This year, record heat and dryness set off
by a powerful El Nino acting in combination with human-forced climate
change has added yet more danger to the dubious and harmful activity.
Not
only are fires now so widespread and intense that they burn
completely out of control, but the pall of smoke cast by the fires
generates its own fire hazard — helping to prevent rain cloud
formation. In total, more than 3,500 hot spots are now visible in the
satellite image. In Borneo and Sumatra, more than 4.2 million acres
or about 6,500 square miles have burned so far.
The
situation is so dire that officials and residents alike are forced to
pin their hopes on the seasonal emergence of rains by mid-November.
Hopes that may be dashed as a strong El Nino combines with already
intense human warming to force ever more extreme conditions.
Links:
Hat
Tip to both Colorado Bob and DT Lange for their amazing research on
the subject
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