
Satellite Images Show Vast Swaths of the Arctic on Fire - colinprince
https://earther.gizmodo.com/satellite-images-show-vast-swaths-of-the-arctic-on-fire-1836500468
======
seraphsf
Summary from the excellent, erudite Twitter thread
([https://mobile.twitter.com/DrTELS/status/1151868725336952832](https://mobile.twitter.com/DrTELS/status/1151868725336952832))
cited in the article:

 _Why should we be worried? Peat shouldn 't be available to burn. It only
burns when it has been disturbed by some significant environmental change
(e.g. drainage/drought). Siberian peatlands should be moist/frozen through
summer, but this year's heatwave has dried them out._

 _Peat fires in the Arctic are part of a number of positive feedback
mechanisms in the climate system. They release old carbon in the form of CO2 &
methane emissions, exacerbating global heating, and they leave behind a dark
charred surface leading to localised heating._

 _Some tentative conclusions:_

 _\- at least some of these fires were ignited by lightning_

 _\- ignition made far more likely by heatwave_

 _\- fires are burning peat soils_

 _\- this is the symptom of a sick Arctic_

~~~
singularity2001
This kind of Question might be unpopular but do those wildfires have any
quantitative relevance in accelerating global warming? Or ask differently how
much of Siberia would have to burn to make any noticeable difference In the
CO2 balance

~~~
adrianN
These fires substantially accelerate the melting of the permafrost, both by
the primary heat of combustion, but also by secondary effects like soot.
Permafrost stores about 1500 Gigatons of carbon. Humanity has released about
650 Gigatons of carbon in total so far.

~~~
konschubert
Will all those 1500 Gigatons be released when the permafrost melts?

~~~
simonh
I wouldn't think so, simply being melted doesn't mean it's released, but the
decay processes triggered by the melting and now apparently wildfires will
start eating into it. It's likely very difficult to predict what proportion
would eventually be released and over what time frame.

However it wouldn't take much in the grand scheme of things to negate any
reductions in CO2 release we manage to make as a civilization, more or less
maintaining the total current CO2 release levels indefinitely. That's a pretty
worrying scenario by itself.

------
H8crilA
There's a lot of fires up north, typically about 500 to 800 fires in all of
Alaska per year. It is important to realise that fires are a natural part of
the ecosystem there. Black spruce (Picea mariana) trees "cause" fires to their
own advantage - burning out other trees and then repopulating the area,
squeezing out contenders.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_mariana#Ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_mariana#Ecology)

The important question is whether there is more fires than usual or less fires
than usual. The fact that there are fires carries little information.

That being said, this summer in Alaska is indeed exceptionally hot:
[https://www.economist.com/united-
states/2019/07/06/alaskas-c...](https://www.economist.com/united-
states/2019/07/06/alaskas-changing-climate)

This summer's exceptional temperature coincided with a bump in black spruce's
pollen production causing everything to be covered in yellow:

 _> Spruce trees release pollen annually, but every three to five years there
is a natural bump in pollen production. This cyclical process is called
masting, and it flushes the forests every few years with spruce seeds,
overwhelming seed-eating animals like red squirrels and white-winged
crossbills, and thereby ensuring many uneaten seeds go on to germinate._

~~~
Pfhreak
Are the fires typically peat fires or forest fires? Because right now they are
having the former.

~~~
H8crilA
Forest fires. Not sure how common peat fires are - don't know almost anything
about them. Looks like a much bigger deal (because it's rare, hence the
ecosystem/communities are not prepared to deal with them).

Also they're having forest fires too, like every year:
[http://smoke.alaska.edu/current_fires.html](http://smoke.alaska.edu/current_fires.html)

 _> Pierre Markuse, a satellite imagery processing guru, has documented some
of the blazes attacking the forests and peatlands of the Arctic._

I was just there a few weeks ago. Reduced visibility in many places due to
smoke, many "thank you firefighters!" signs along the road, helicopters
picking up water from some of the millions of Alaskan lakes. It's still a very
beautiful place.

~~~
garmaine
This isn’t about local ecosystem disruption. It’s about releasing more global
warming gasses into the atmosphere than humans have produced since the start
of the industrial revolution.

~~~
H8crilA
Burning down _the entire world 's vegetation_ would result in less carbon
emissions than we've already emitted. It's actually a pretty mind blowing
fact.

[http://www.futureearth.org/blog/2018-jan-31/how-much-
carbon-...](http://www.futureearth.org/blog/2018-jan-31/how-much-carbon-does-
planets-vegetation-hold)

> Trees and other vegetation are the planet’s carbon storage closet –
> absorbing and releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in an
> ongoing cycle. But just how big is that potential? A study from December has
> calculated that the world’s vegetation, from Amazonian rainforests to
> Eurasian grasslands, may hold about 450 billion tonnes of carbon today.

[https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions](https://www.co2.earth/global-
co2-emissions)

> From 1870 to 2014, cumulative carbon emissions totaled about 545 GtC.
> Emissions were partitioned among the atmosphere (approx. 230 GtC or 42%),
> ocean (approx. 155 GtC or 28%) and the land (approx. 160 GtC or 29%).

~~~
rebuilder
But we're discussing peat, which is accumulated over thousands of years.

~~~
H8crilA
Pardon my ignorance, that does indeed look worse.

~~~
H8crilA
Actually it's about carbon trapped in the permafrost, not in the peat. Idk how
burning peat contributes to permafrost melt.

------
CharlesMerriam2
One person studying climate change at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
opined that the U.S. would not take climate change seriously until it loses a
major city.

New Orleans doesn't count.

~~~
BurningFrog
I doubt even losing NYC _and_ LA will make China or India change course.

~~~
ramraj07
Pretty sure they'll loose cities before the US does. Most cities in India are
at their wits end in water crises already

~~~
kortilla
Water crisis != pain from climate change.

A massive dam is a great way to deal with a water crisis at expense of the
environment.

------
srameshc
_That’s worrisome since peat is rich in carbon, and fires can release it into
the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Peat fires can also burn underground into
the winter and reignite in spring_ This is scary.

~~~
notimetorelax
I lived through peat fires, those can last decades. And it makes forest very
dangerous to walk, it’s possible to fall into a hole created by peat fire.

------
quickthrower2
The irony is climate change fucking up parts of the planet not many people
“man on the street” types care for that much. If it affected populous wealthy
areas first it’d be an emergency and we might be more motivated to change
things.

------
tzs
Here's a good site for visually presenting a lot of different worldwide
atmosphere, ocean, and related data:

[https://earth.nullschool.net/](https://earth.nullschool.net/)

Surface particulates is a good view to check for fires:

[https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...](https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-103.12,34.00,383)

Click on the word "earth" on the lower left to get the options.

------
Merrill
The lands around the Arctic Ocean are really dry, since the winds off the
Arctic Ocean blow over ice much of the year. Therefore, in summer what
vegetation there is may rapidly dry out on the surface and burn easily.

Once the Arctic Ocean is open more of the year, more precipitation should be
delivered to the surrounding areas.

~~~
dontbenebby
One interesting fact is that a desert is a place without precipitation - many
very cold areas don't have much evaporation and thus don't have much
precipitation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_desert)

~~~
H8crilA
The area around Deadhorse, Alaska (Prudhoe Bay) is technically a desert with
an average yearly precipitation of 153 mm. A desert is anything below 250 mm a
year. But just look at the map surrounding it - there's thousands of lakes:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prudhoe+Bay,+AK](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prudhoe+Bay,+AK)

Lakes are supported from below by a thick layer of permafrost which is
completely unpenetrable to liquid water. Combined with low evaportation - it
is one of the most moist pieces of land on the planet. And a desert at that :)

------
chr1
We need large scale meat farming in arctic, Pleistocene Park [1] but for
commercial purposes. It would restore grasslands that we have destroyed buy
driving arctic megafauna to extinction, would prevent peat fire, and
uncontrolled melting of permafrost, and would save some of tropical forests
from being cut down for meat production.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park)

------
v8engine
Whoever developed Gizmodo frontend probably never read any article on it.
That's some really bad image load animation. That solid 1 second delay
hardcoded in CSS + network delay for lazy loading just leaves the whole
article a white canvas while I scroll.

Why would you want to re-hide the image after I scroll out of it? Scrolling
back up gives me that 1 second penalty to make the image visible. So
frustrating.

------
org3432
Time to buy air filters for when the smoke drifts into your city and you have
to close all your windows for a week.

~~~
craz8
Seattle has had that two years in a row so far. SF had it last year

I now own air testers, 3 portable air cleaners and a brand new A/C system with
whole new filters

~~~
mehrdadn
Out of curiosity, do you feel filtering like this actually prevents anything?
I'm not questioning the filters but rather the graveness of the threat in the
first place (except for the elderly etc.).

~~~
greglindahl
You probably have friends with asthma, it’s quite common.

~~~
mehrdadn
Yeah I intended "etc." to cover such cases. I was wondering if it'd affect
someone who otherwise wouldn't have related health issues.

------
ryanmarsh
If you'd like to know how imagery like this is discovered in the first place
it's worth following NOAA's Daily Significant Imagery report. Which I no
longer follow and can't seem to find a working link for right now.

------
emerongi
Does anyone have good books to recommend on global warming?

~~~
hadsed
I recently read, The Uninhabitable Earth. It came out this year I believe, and
pulls absolutely no punches... Not even in the title!

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41552709-the-
uninhabitab...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41552709-the-
uninhabitable-earth)

~~~
gdubs
Same author who wrote the New York Magazine story on Climate Change a little
while back, which scared the pants off everyone.

Promoted debate over whether fear is a good or bad motivator to get people to
change behavior. My personal opinion is that it is. Or at a minimum, the
watered down, conservative IPCC narratives really failed to move politicians
and the general public.

------
agumonkey
Yet another positive feedback loop I never thought of.

------
chiefalchemist
Can I presume that the models used to make predictions about climate change
did not consider this? As a contributor to the process accelerating?

~~~
skosch
Yeah, this absolutely crucial piece of information is missing from most
articles like this one, a journalistic failure I find incomprehensible.

Anyways, the Woods Hole Research center claims that boreal forest fires are
_not_ included in current climate models, and are likely to exacerbate the
problem: [http://whrc.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/PB_wildfires.pdf](http://whrc.org/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/PB_wildfires.pdf)

------
cmroanirgo
> _All told, northern fires released as much carbon dioxide in June as the
> entire country of Sweden does in a year_

------
quakeguy
Anyone who isn't scared now should read this, idk what comes next, but we, as
a species, should prepare for the worst. Sounding alarmist? I hope so, but i
fear not.

~~~
leggomylibro
What, were you not already convinced that we're unlikely to last longer than a
few more generations? Sure, read about it and get scared all you want.

But you can't fix human behavior. Another word for it is 'economics', and
that's sort of the problem.

~~~
Ma8ee
I’m mostly worried about defeatist. Without you I actually think we have a
chance to survive this.

~~~
daxfohl
Without the defeatists, the optimists, and everybody in between we'd have it
licked!

~~~
Ma8ee
If everyone with a brain and a conscience would do their best, independently
of everyone else, this wouldn’t even be a problem. Now too many uses
everyone’s else inaction as an excuse for their own.

~~~
madaxe_again
Yes, if everyone on the titanic had just believed a bit harder then it would
have floated.

It’s not about inaction being an excuse, it’s about realising that trying to
put out a house fire with a water pistol isn’t going to work - particularly if
half the neighbourhood is there chucking gasoline on it.

I live responsibly, recycle, grow my own food, built my house out of
traditional and local materials, plant trees, pay for other people to plant
trees.

None of it is going to make the damnedest bit of difference, other than mildly
soothing my conscience. If I really cared about my impact, I would kill
myself. I’ve done the next best thing and had myself sterilised - no children,
ever.

The world is still going to die. I’ll just be in a happier place when the food
riots start.

~~~
Ma8ee
> Yes, if everyone on the titanic had just believed a bit harder then it would
> have floated.

That was one of the stupidest similes I’ve heard. A more accurate one would
be: if everyone just stopped hauling up buckets of water from the sea to pour
them into the intact ship, we could avoid the disaster.

And this is illustrates something very important. Climate change isn’t an
inevitable catastrophe out of our hands. It is a catastrophe everyone of us us
creating with our individual actions every day. If each of us just stoped,
there would be no catastrophe.

~~~
cyphar
100 companies are responsible for ~70% of emissions. To argue that an ordinary
person switching to reusable bags and an electric car will make a difference
is (sadly) wishful thinking.

It's nice to feel in control, so I understand why you might want that story to
be true -- but I'd suggest a better use of your energy would be political
action. The only way this problem can be solved is through significant
political action that is proportional to the climate catastrophe we are
facing. Anything else is adjusting deckchairs on the Titanic.

Your analogy makes no sense by the way -- nobody was pouring buckets of water
into the Titanic. The hull was breached -- there was a fundamental problem
with the state of the ship. In fact, everyone getting pails and throwing water
off the Titanic wouldn't have saved the ship or the people. Individual
philanthropic action can't fix problems that an entire economic system has
created.

~~~
larkery
I agree with most of what you have said - we need to exert political pressure
by taking action. This action probably needs to be disruptive and unpleasant
to work, like the actions taken by the civil rights movements of the last
century.

However, I would also like to put forward the following argument for why your
own efforts _could_ make a difference:

Imagine a trolley, speeding toward a junction. On one branch is a child, tied
to the rails.

You are in the plant room and can cut power to the trolley, but this will only
slow it down - the trolley's momentum alone will kill the child. However, you
see across the way a stranger in the signal box, surrounded by levers
controlling the points in the station. They are frantically pulling levers,
but so far they haven't hit on the one which diverts the trolley.

Should you cut the power to slow the trolley?

We are on the tracks - if we survive, it will be because of a political or
technical breakthrough before it's _too late_. We don't know precisely when
_too late_ is - it could be ten years, or twenty, or ten years ago and we're
buggered. Each individual's emissions savings make _too late_ a little later,
which changes the odds of survival a little bit (or our estimate of the odds -
this is probably the philosophical weak spot in the argument).

Maybe the plane trip you don't take or the car you stop driving or the product
you choose not to buy is the marginal decision that gives time to avert
disaster. If we do avert disaster, one of these decisions must be that
marginal decision, somewhere, somewhen.

These choices are tickets in the not-extinction lottery, and it makes sense to
play when you can, as much as you can.

~~~
cyphar
If you have a (virtually) unlimited amount of time and energy to expend on
thinking about climate change and its impacts, go for it.

My point is that you will get far more bang for your buck if you spend energy
on political action. Most ordinary people don't have time to spend on HN
arguing about the best way of stopping climate change, they have other things
to do in their lives -- and we should be convincing them to take political
action (with us) instead of wasting their limited amounts of spare energy on
minor personal changes that won't have as much of an impact.

~~~
larkery
I guess if you have a limited budget to spend, I would put political action at
the top of the list. However, I think typically people have several limited
budgets which are kind of incommensurable.

For example for me, the decision never to fly again has not cost me any action
points to spend on my involvement in political campaigns, nor has that limited
my decision to work in this field for a reduced wage than I could get in
adtech, or whatever.

Where efforts are not orthogonal like this I'd say go for politics first
though. So we are in agreement!

------
singularity2001
Satellite images show nothing if JavaScript is disabled. Is there any benign
reason why they don’t just use <img src?

