• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Analyst Sees Oil and Gas Running Short of Cash as IEA Releases Energy Investment Update May 30, 2023
House of Commons Motion, Senate Bill Urge New Climate Rules for Financial Institutions May 30, 2023
13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires May 30, 2023
Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing May 30, 2023
Supreme Court Decision Undercuts U.S. Clean Water Act May 30, 2023
Next
Prev

Tinder-Dry Canadian Peatlands Becoming a Ticking Carbon Bomb

October 15, 2020
Reading time: 3 minutes

Simon Huguet/Wikimedia Commons

Simon Huguet/Wikimedia Commons

2
SHARES
 

Recent work by Canadian ecohydrologists on the devastating 2018 peatland fire near Parry Sound, Ontario has confirmed related findings from around the globe: the Earth’s peatlands are drying out as temperatures rise, creating carbon-bomb tinder boxes.

Scattered around the planet, “peatlands are estimated to store about 550 gigatonnes of carbon, more than all of the forests in the world combined,” reports the Globe and Mail. About 25% of peatlands are found in Canada, “with particularly dense concentrations in the Hudson Bay Lowlands and the Mackenzie River basin.”

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
Subscribe

These peatlands, and the carbon they contain, are under increasing threat from wildfire: witness the infernos that devastated peatland-rich Siberia this summer, conflagrations that “loosed about as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the Greater Toronto Area has generated over the past five years.”

Speaking with the Globe about the Parry Sound study, recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, co-author Sophie Wilkinson of McMaster University described a “desolate” ecosystem harrowingly damaged by the intensity of the fire. “There was so little soil left that most of the trees had fallen over after they had burned,” she said. The Globe says all peat deposits less than 70 centimetres thick “were completely incinerated.”

While deeper stores of peat did survive “and stay wet enough to rebound,” the Parry Sound study contributes to what Earth systems scientists at the University of East Anglia describe as a “now indisputable” trend toward more frequent and severe wildfires around the globe—especially in drought-stricken places like Australia and California, but also in formerly unexpected locations, like wet bogland.

The East Anglia brief, released in late September, “examined 116 separate studies and found that all of them either directly strengthen or are consistent with evidence that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of wildfires,” reports the Globe. Scientist Matthew Jones said studies using climate models “are all pointing to this situation getting worse the more the temperature rises.”

In northern Canada, the rising incidence of wildfire, especially in peatland regions, bears close watching, said Natural Resources Canada fire scientist Daniel Thompson. Also of growing concern: the crumbling interface between peatlands and permafrost in the north. After millennia providing insulation to the frozen land beneath, burned peatlands leave behind a “blackened, sooty surface”, one that is unfortunately ideal “for absorbing sunlight and warming up the ground.”

The Globe also flags the phenomenon of “zombie fires” that smoulder in peatlands through the winter, a slow burn that accelerates the community-devastating thawing of permafrost already under way as the climate warms.

And scientists are concerned “that melting permafrost is releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, creating another feedback loop that can further accelerate climate change,” a scenario to which wildfire “adds another boost.”

There is complexity, too, in the interaction between peat, permafrost, and wildfire: for example, the Globe notes that melting permafrost may actually suppress fire, at least for a little while. This new understanding of how fire is shaping northern ecosystems has peatland scientist calling for further research.

“The field is in urgent need of a coordinated and multidisciplinary effort to track the new reality in the North, and how changing fire conditions are playing into the story,” the Globe writes, citing Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder.



in Arctic & Antarctica, Biodiversity & Habitat, Canada, Climate & Society, Climate Impacts & Adaptation, Drought & Wildfires, Ice Loss & Sea Level Rise, International, International Agencies & Studies, Jurisdictions, Methane, Soil & Natural Sequestration

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Equinor
Oil & Gas

Equinor Delays Bay du Nord Offshore Oil Project, Blames ‘Volatile’ Markets

May 31, 2023
18
/Piqusels
Finance & Investment

Analyst Sees Oil and Gas Running Short of Cash as IEA Releases Energy Investment Update

May 31, 2023
433
Ryan Turnbull/Facebook
Legal & Regulatory

House of Commons Motion, Senate Bill Urge New Climate Rules for Financial Institutions

May 30, 2023
161

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

/Piqusels

Analyst Sees Oil and Gas Running Short of Cash as IEA Releases Energy Investment Update

May 31, 2023
433
Ryan Turnbull/Facebook

House of Commons Motion, Senate Bill Urge New Climate Rules for Financial Institutions

May 30, 2023
161
Neal Alderson/Twitter

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
2.4k
David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

Clean Energy to Add 700,000 New Jobs by 2050, with Alberta in the Lead

May 30, 2023
149
Martin Davis/Facebook

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 30, 2023
548
York Region/flickr

Hamilton Plans Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 31, 2023
398

Recent Posts

Equinor

Equinor Delays Bay du Nord Offshore Oil Project, Blames ‘Volatile’ Markets

May 31, 2023
18
David/flickr

Supreme Court Decision Undercuts U.S. Clean Water Act

May 30, 2023
68
Nicolas Rénac/Flickr

Climate Change to Cut Coffee Growing Lands by Over 50%

May 30, 2023
57
ValiGreceanu/Pixabay

Report Urges Tax Hike for Luxury Air Travel, ‘Pets on Jets’

May 30, 2023
57
Jörg Möller/Pixabay

UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety

May 29, 2023
82

Waste Heat from Quebec Data Centre to Grow 80,000 Tonnes of Veggies Per Year

May 29, 2023
115
Next Post
Dry fields and bare trees near San Joaquin, California

Navajo Ranchers Endure in the Face of Relentless Drought

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}