title: The impact of boreal forest fire on climate warming.
abstract: We report measurements and analysis of a boreal forest fire, integrating the effects of greenhouse gases, aerosols, black carbon deposition on snow and sea ice, and postfire changes in surface albedo. The net effect of all agents was to increase radiative forcing during the first year (34 +/- 31 Watts per square meter of burned area), but to decrease radiative forcing when averaged over an 80-year fire cycle (-2.3 +/- 2.2 Watts per square meter) because multidecadal increases in surface albedo had a larger impact than fire-emitted greenhouse gases. This result implies that future increases in boreal fire may not accelerate climate warming.
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA. jranders@uci.edu
authors.forename: J T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Randerson
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: M G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Flanner
authors.forename: S D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Chambers
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: P G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Hess
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pfister
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Mack
authors.forename: K K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Treseder
authors.forename: L R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Welp
authors.forename: F S
authors.initials: FS
authors.lastname: Chapin
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Harden
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Goulden
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lyons
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Neff
authors.forename: E A G
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Schuur
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Zender
mesh_terms: D017753:Ecosystem; D005390:Fires; D017752:Greenhouse Effect; D014197:Trees