The 2019-20 fires in Australia destroyed 186,000 km2 of forest
The plume of smoke injected massive amounts of black carbon into the atmosphere
This gas contributed to heating the stratosphere up to 2 ºC for months
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The Summer fires of 2019-2010 in Australia they marked a before and after. Approximately 186,000 square kilometers of forest were razed and billions of animals they died. Now we know that that was only part of the damage caused: the ‘black summer ‘ had a striking global effect, a study has just discovered.
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Smoke from fires heated the stratosphere
The fires of the previous austral summer were such that the plume of smoke rivaled those emitted by volcanic eruptions. So much so, that a group of scientists has found that the Australian fire came to heat the stratosphere.
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“Extreme forest fires can inject smoke into the upper troposphere and even the stratosphere in favorable weather conditions,” states the study, published in ‘Geophysical Research Letters‘. “The higher the smoke is injected, the longer it will persist and the broader its spread.”
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The flames emitted nearly a trillion grams (about 0.9 teragrams) of particles of smoke to the stratosphere. This is the largest number ever documented in the age of satellites, he stresses’Science Alert’.
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The smoke contained a mixture of organic carbon and black carbon, among others. These have the ability to trap heat in the atmosphere and heat the surrounding air, as with other greenhouse gases.
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“Simulations suggest that the smoke remained in the stratosphere for all of 2020 and that it warmed the stratosphere appreciably by about 1-2 degrees Celsius for more than six months“, the researchers explain. And not only that, it may have also affected the chemistry of the stratosphere, with major implications.
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Among other things, they believe that there is a relationship with the massive ozone depletion recorded in the stratosphere, having contributed to forming a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica of 24 million square kilometers in early October 2020.
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