Are northern hemisphere boreal forest fires more sensitive to future aerosol mitigation than to greenhouse gas–driven warming?

Allen, R. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1616-9719, Samset, B. H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8013-1833, Wilcox, L. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5691-1493 and Fisher, R. A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3260-9227 (2024) Are northern hemisphere boreal forest fires more sensitive to future aerosol mitigation than to greenhouse gas–driven warming? Science Advances, 10 (13). eadl4007. ISSN 2375-2548 doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adl4007

Abstract/Summary

Considerable interest exists in understanding how climate change affects wildfire activity. Here, we use the Community Earth System Model version 2 to show that future anthropogenic aerosol mitigation yields larger increases in fire activity in the Northern Hemisphere boreal forests, relative to a base simulation that lacks climate policy and has large increases in greenhouse gases. The enhanced fire response is related to a deeper layer of summertime soil drying, consistent with increased downwelling surface shortwave radiation and enhanced surface evapotranspiration. In contrast, soil column drying is muted under increasing greenhouse gases due to plant physiological responses to increased carbon dioxide and by enhanced melting of soil ice at a depth that increases soil liquid water. Although considerable uncertainty remains in the representation of fire processes in models, our results suggest that boreal forest fires may be more sensitive to future aerosol mitigation than to greenhouse gas–driven warming.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/115966
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS
Uncontrolled Keywords	Multidisciplinary
Publisher	American Association for the Advancement of Science
Download/View statistics	View download statistics for this item