Vast CO 2 release from Australian fires in 2019-2020 constrained by satellite.

Autor: van der Velde IR; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands. I.R.van.der.Velde@sron.nl.; Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I.R.van.der.Velde@sron.nl., van der Werf GR; Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands., Houweling S; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands.; Department of Earth Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands., Maasakkers JD; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands., Borsdorff T; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands., Landgraf J; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands., Tol P; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands., van Kempen TA; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands., van Hees R; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands., Hoogeveen R; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands., Veefkind JP; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, The Netherlands.; Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands., Aben I; SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands.; Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Nature [Nature] 2021 Sep; Vol. 597 (7876), pp. 366-369. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Sep 15.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03712-y
Abstrakt: Southeast Australia experienced intensive and geographically extensive wildfires during the 2019-2020 summer season 1,2 . The fires released substantial amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 3 . However, existing emission estimates based on fire inventories are uncertain 4 , and vary by up to a factor of four for this event. Here we constrain emission estimates with the help of satellite observations of carbon monoxide 5 , an analytical Bayesian inversion 6 and observed ratios between emitted carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide 7 . We estimate emissions of carbon dioxide to be 715 teragrams (range 517-867) from November 2019 to January 2020. This is more than twice the estimate derived by five different fire inventories 8-12 , and broadly consistent with estimates based on a bottom-up bootstrap analysis of this fire episode 13 . Although fires occur regularly in the savannas in northern Australia, the recent episodes were extremely large in scale and intensity, burning unusually large areas of eucalyptus forest in the southeast 13 . The fires were driven partly by climate change 14,15 , making better-constrained emission estimates particularly important. This is because the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide may become increasingly dependent on fire-driven climate-carbon feedbacks, as highlighted by this event 16 .
(© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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