Persistent Stratospheric Warming Due to 2019–2020 Australian Wildfire Smoke

Yu, Pengfei; Davis, Sean; Toon, B.; Portmann, R. W.; Bardeen, Charles G.; Barnes, John; Telg, Hagen; Maloney, C.; Rosenlof, Karen H.

doi:10.1029/2021gl092609

Cited by 68 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(72 reference statements)

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“…Intense wildfires have been observed to regionally alter stratospheric aerosol optical thickness and radiative forcing as well as stratospheric ozone concentrations in ways that were previously only known from moderate to large volcanic eruptions, with substantial effects on temperature in the lower stratosphere 8 , 10 – 13 . Compared to volcanic sulfate aerosols, however, wildfire smoke contains high amounts of organic carbon and black carbon, which strongly absorb at visible wavelengths and therefore have a strong heating potential 14 , 15 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observing the climate impact of large wildfires on stratospheric temperature

Stocker

Ladstädter

Steiner

2021

Sci Rep

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Wildfires are expected to become more frequent and intense in the future. They not only pose a serious threat to humans and ecosystems, but also affect Earth’s atmosphere. Wildfire plumes can reach into the stratosphere, but little is known about their climate impact. Here, we reveal observational evidence that major wildfires can have a severe impact on the atmospheric temperature structure and short-term climate in the stratosphere. Using advanced satellite observation, we find substantial warming of up to 10 K of the lower stratosphere within the wildfire plumes during their early development. The short-term climate signal in the lower stratosphere lasts several months and amounts to 1 K for the Northern American wildfires in 2017, and up to striking 3.5 K for the Australian wildfires in 2020. This is stronger than any signal from recent volcanic eruptions. Such extreme events affect atmospheric composition and climate trends, underpinning their importance for future climate.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observing the climate impact of large wildfires on stratospheric temperature

Stocker

Ladstädter

Steiner

2021

Sci Rep

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“…stratosphere is estimated at 1-2 K based on a fire plume analysis and associated climate model simulations using prescribed sea surface temperatures (Yu et al, 2021). While the amount and persistence of associated aerosol burdens have drawn parallels to major volcanic eruptions, an understanding of similarities in the climate response will depend on a more complete analysis and fully coupled modeling of the event.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupled Climate Responses to Recent Australian Wildfire and COVID‐19 Emissions Anomalies Estimated in CESM2

Fasullo

Rosenbloom

Buchholz

et al. 2021

Geophysical Research Letters

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Multiple episodes of anomalous climate forcing have occurred in recent years. These include the biomass burning emissions anomalies from the 2019-2020 Australian wildfire season (hereafter referred to as AF), and anthropogenic emissions perturbations arising from the response to the spread of the Coronavirus Disease 2019, which began in Jan 2020 and continues through the present (hereafter referred to as COVID). While significant efforts have been made for diagnosing the climate effects of these events, understanding the coupled response to each and estimating the broader significance of the responses remains a work in progress.The 2019-2020 AF season was singular in its severity and associated particulate emissions (Hirsch & Koren, 2021;Khaykin et al., 2020). While Australia is known as a landscape that experiences frequent bushfires, extreme bushfires with associated pyrocumulonimbus have been increasing over the last few decades and are predicted to increase even further in the coming decades (Dowdy et al., 2019;Sharples et al., 2016). The extreme AF season in 2019-2020 had devastating consequences for lives, ecosystems, and property, including wide-scale smoke impacts across the southeast of the continent (Wintle et al., 2020). Additionally, hemispheric transport of fire pollution at low and lofted altitudes created atmospheric signatures over New Zealand and South America. This pollution remained in the atmosphere for well over three months, with solar heating of a stable, dense smoke plume creating a localized chemical and entrainment driven stratospheric ozone minimum and circulation response (Khaykin et al., 2020). The associated warming of the

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“…Recent catastrophic forest fires in Canada in 2017 18 and Australia in 2019 and 2020 19 , 20 produced 0.3-1 Tg of smoke (0.006-0.02 Tg soot), which was subsequently heated by sunlight and lofted high in the stratosphere, adding confidence to nuclear war simulations that predict the same process will occur after nuclear war.…”

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confidence: 92%

Global Famine after Nuclear War

Xia

Robock

Scherrer

et al. 2021

Preprint

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In a nuclear war, bombs targeted on cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere, which would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet. The soot loadings would cause decadal disruptions in Earth’s climate, which would impact food production systems on land and in the oceans. In 1980s, investigations of nuclear winter impacts on global agricultural production and food availability for 15 nations, but new information now allows us to update those estimates. Recently, several studies analyzed changes of major grain crops and marine wild-catch fisheries for different scenarios of regional nuclear war using sophisticated models. However, the impact on the total food supply available to humans is more complex. Here we show that considering all food sources and potential adaptation measures, such as using animal feed directly for humans, famine would result for most of Earth even from a war between India and Pakistan using less than 3% of the global nuclear arsenal. We look at the climate impacts from a range of scales from regional to global nuclear war, and estimate the total amount of food calories available in each nation, including crops, livestock, and fisheries, for each year following a nuclear holocaust. Our findings quantify the global indirect impacts of nuclear war away from target areas, and demonstrate the need to prevent any scale of nuclear war.

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Persistent Stratospheric Warming Due to 2019–2020 Australian Wildfire Smoke

Cited by 68 publications

References 35 publications

Observing the climate impact of large wildfires on stratospheric temperature

Observing the climate impact of large wildfires on stratospheric temperature

Coupled Climate Responses to Recent Australian Wildfire and COVID‐19 Emissions Anomalies Estimated in CESM2

Global Famine after Nuclear War

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