• 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
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
  FEATURED
BREAKING: Fossil Fuels Fall 25% by 2030, Renewables ‘Keep the Path Open’ in IEA Net-Zero Update September 26, 2023
Green Space Groups Gear for Bigger Fights After Ontario Reverses Greenbelt Land Grab September 25, 2023
Community-Driven Solutions Can Take Back Ontario’s Electricity Future: Torrie September 25, 2023
‘Apex Oil and Gas Lobby’ Undercuts Canadian Sovereignty, Laxer Tells Foreign Influence Probe September 25, 2023
Momentum Builds Toward COP 28 as Countries Back Fossil Fuel Phaseout September 25, 2023
Next
Prev

New Mathematical Model Will Help Forecast and Fight Peat Fires

December 9, 2020
Reading time: 4 minutes

Tan Yi Han/Wikimedia Commons

Tan Yi Han/Wikimedia Commons

 

As the world warms, the planet’s carbon-dense peatlands are catching fire, creating fierce conflagrations with a “zombie-like” tendency to re-emerge. But a recent study published in the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute concludes that an elegant extrapolations of math can help land stewards prevent the fires before they start.

“Some clever new modeling, known as cellular automata, is giving fire scientists unprecedented insight into the life, spread, death, and rebirth of zombie fires,” reports Wired. Developed by three mechanical engineers from Imperial College London and a forensic architect from the University of London, the modelling could provide a tool for preventing the monster underground conflagrations that are increasingly erupting in the world’s peatlands.

  • 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

“The magic of cellular automata is that by aggregating very simple rules in a space, it actually is able to capture what is called an ‘emergent behaviour,’ which is a behaviour that is extremely complex,” said study co-author Guillermo Rein. In the case of peat fires, these “rules” are factors like relative humidity, time, and proximity to a patch already burning.

This cellular automata aggregation and prediction model also permits those who deploy it to receive results in “super real-time”. That means, more or less, that “you get results of the future location of the fire before the fire is already there,” said Rein.

The simplicity of the model also means that “it doesn’t require much computational power—running it 100 times takes five seconds on a regular laptop,” notes Wired. What such low wattage and high speed allows is a rapid mapping of probability, for example, “where the fire will be the fastest, where the fire will be the strongest.” 

And there is plenty of power and room to add “still more variables like wind and topography, even roads and rivers that act as firebreaks,” Wired writes. As Rein notes in the study: “You can literally complicate as much as you want, and it will still be really, really quick to run.” 

But as the adage goes, “all models are wrong, but some are useful,” Wired cautions. Rein and his colleagues were wary of assuming their model could produce a “perfect simulation” of a real-world peat fire, so they added the rigour of comparing their simulations “to what they and other scientists have already observed with controlled burns set experimentally in actual peatlands,” along with drone footage from Indonesia’s 2015 peat fires. 

“Sure enough, their model jibed with the real-world observations of how peat fires spread, and how at times individual fires in a landscape merge into several bigger fires,” writes Wired.  

“Researchers have long known that as peatlands dry, they switch from a fire break to a fire propagator,” said McMaster University ecohydrologist Mike Waddington, who was not involved with the study. He added that the cellular automata model will help fire scientists learn more about the role that moisture levels play in that switch, and better understand the complex process by which burning peatlands oscillate between smouldering and flaming states.

Such understanding is growing ever more urgent in the face of the climate crisis. “When peatlands burn, they can release thousands of years’ worth of accumulated carbon into the atmosphere in great burps, further warming the planet—we’re talking up to 100 times the amount of carbon that’s released from the average above-ground wildfire,” Wired writes. 

And where wildfires can sometimes serve to “reset” an ecosystem, peat fires merely destroy. “Peat fires are monsters,” Wired writes, citing Rein. “They are devastating. Nature has no role whatsoever for the peat to burn.” 

On top of that, while burned forest will begin to re-sequester carbon as soon as it starts to grow back, such regrowth occurs very slowly in peatlands—on a scale of millennia, in fact.

A study just published in Nature Climate Change affirms the urgent need to address this serious problem, reports Radio Canada International. The international team of climate modellers behind the study “combined estimates from 44 peatland experts and suggested that peatland loss could contribute about 104 billion tonnes of carbon this century.” The team is urging climate modellers to begin including peatlands in their calculations—a factor that has been generally overlooked to date because the ecosystems “have been considered ‘inert’, neither absorbing nor releasing carbon if left alone.”  

While acknowledging that the estimate is highly uncertain because of the scarcity of data, co-author Angela Gallego-Sala said that there is enough evidence to know that the world needs to act now, and with urgency, to restore degraded peatlands and protect what remains. 

“We clearly need to make decisions now about how we manage these ecosystems. We simply can’t afford for peatlands to go up in smoke,” she said. “Where people have a strong economic incentive, or even necessity, to destroy peatlands, we need plans and policies that offer more sustainable alternatives.”



in Climate & Society, Climate Impacts & Adaptation, Drought & Wildfires, International, International Agencies & Studies, Jurisdictions, Soil & Natural Sequestration

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Jason Blackeye/Unsplash
International Agencies & Studies

BREAKING: Fossil Fuels Fall 25% by 2030, Renewables ‘Keep the Path Open’ in IEA Net-Zero Update

September 26, 2023
213
Duffins Agriculture Preserve/North Country House Media via Greenbelt Foundation
Ontario

Green Space Groups Gear for Bigger Fights After Ontario Reverses Greenbelt Land Grab

September 25, 2023
89
UNDP/flickr
Heat & Power

Community-Driven Solutions Can Take Back Ontario’s Electricity Future: Torrie

September 26, 2023
102

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

Jason Blackeye/Unsplash

BREAKING: Fossil Fuels Fall 25% by 2030, Renewables ‘Keep the Path Open’ in IEA Net-Zero Update

September 26, 2023
213
Cullen328/wikimedia commons

Manufactured Housing Could Dent the Affordable Housing Crunch with Energy-Efficient Designs

September 20, 2023
388
Wilson Hui/flickr

‘Apex Oil and Gas Lobby’ Undercuts Canadian Sovereignty, Laxer Tells Foreign Influence Probe

September 26, 2023
102
UNDP/flickr

Community-Driven Solutions Can Take Back Ontario’s Electricity Future: Torrie

September 26, 2023
102
Duffins Agriculture Preserve/North Country House Media via Greenbelt Foundation

Green Space Groups Gear for Bigger Fights After Ontario Reverses Greenbelt Land Grab

September 25, 2023
89
United Nations/Twitter

Momentum Builds Toward COP 28 as Countries Back Fossil Fuel Phaseout

September 26, 2023
80

Recent Posts

UniEnergy Technologies/wikimedia commons

Multi-Day Storage Can Deliver Cheaper Grid Reliability, Battery Maker Says

September 25, 2023
64
David Mellis/flickr

Top Food Brands Prepare for Supply Chains Disrupted by Climate Change

September 25, 2023
51
Power lines, Mississauga, Canada

Two First Nations Groups Vie to Build Northern Ontario Power Line

September 25, 2023
76
UN Climate Change/flickr

Don’t Attend COP 28 Unless You’re There to Help, Figueres Tells Oil and Gas

September 24, 2023
471
Jon Sullivan/flickr

Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote

September 21, 2023
674
Rewat Wannasuk/Pexels

Virtual Power Plants Could Cut Peak Demand 20%, Save U.S. Grid $10B Per Year

September 20, 2023
128
Next Post
/Pxhere

Wildfires, Pandemic to Drive 3-5% Increase in Food Prices

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
The Energy Mix - Energy Central
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance

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}