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Satellite Images Show Vast Swaths of the Arctic on Fire
- srameshc 7y agoThat’s worrisome since peat is rich in carbon, and fires can release it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Peat fires can also burn underground into the winter and reignite in spring This is scary.
- notimetorelax 7y agoI lived through peat fires, those can last decades. And it makes forest very dangerous to walk, it’s possible to fall into a hole created by peat fire.
- quickthrower2 7y agoThe irony is climate change fucking up parts of the planet not many people “man on the street” types care for that much. If it affected populous wealthy areas first it’d be an emergency and we might be more motivated to change things.
- org3432 7y agoTime to buy air filters for when the smoke drifts into your city and you have to close all your windows for a week.
- craz8 7y agoSeattle has had that two years in a row so far. SF had it last year I now own air testers, 3 portable air cleaners and a brand new A/C system with whole new filters
- ed312 7y agoWhat do you use for indoor air testing? I'm generally curious about my indoor vs outdoor air quality living in a city.
- craz8 7y agoI have 2 Awairs - most of the time the number is over 90 (which is good) but it also measures individual values as well as that overall score My company has a different one in the office in SF, and that one publishes to the net so the results are available to employees to see if they should stay home
- mehrdadn 7y agoOut of curiosity, do you feel filtering like this actually prevents anything? I'm not questioning the filters but rather the graveness of the threat in the first place (except for the elderly etc.).
- tlb 7y agoThe smoke in SF last year made me sick, and air quality rarely bothers me. It’s not just carbon soot, there are all kinds of cyclic hydrocarbons produced by smoldering green wood. It’s much worse than campfire smoke.
- Pfhreak 7y agoYes, many healthy people were sick in Seattle last year and they were recommending wearing masks outdoors. Anecdotally, I experienced headaches and sluggishness when I didn't wear a mask.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- greglindahl 7y agoYou probably have friends with asthma, it’s quite common.
- mehrdadn 7y agoYeah I intended "etc." to cover such cases. I was wondering if it'd affect someone who otherwise wouldn't have related health issues.
- darkpuma 7y agoTwo years ago everything inside my home in Seattle was covered in in a fine layer soot when I left a window open overnight with a box fan next to it. So yeah, filters are useful.
- Tiktaalik 7y agoWe've already had this in Vancouver for the last two summers. Thankfully this year we've been given a reprieve.
- temptemptemp111 7y agoPropaganda always gets to #1 on HN so quickly.
- cmroanirgo 7y ago> All told, northern fires released as much carbon dioxide in June as the entire country of Sweden does in a year
- CharlesMerriam2 7y agoOne person studying climate change at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories opined that the U.S. would not take climate change seriously until it loses a major city. New Orleans doesn't count.
- ttul 7y agoI’m sorry to say this, but it can’t happen soon enough.
- technofiend 7y ago>New Orleans doesn't count. I'm not sure anything outside the Northeast does. There were many calls to stop funding post-hurricane reconstruction until Sandy hit. Puerto Rico is still struggling to get funding years after Irma and Maria, and Houston is debating if they really want to stop construction in the Addicks reservoir and surrounding areas.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoIn NJ we got "stronger than the storm" and zero reputable talk - that I recall - about the possibility of not being so willing to rebuild. It's difficult to sway public opinion about the immediacy when so many other signals parrot tradition and the staus quo. We're not stronger than the storm, only amazingly dumber.
- addicted 7y agoNYC was crippled by Sandy, and that didn’t lead to any changes. Let’s be honest. The only thing that will change is if the Republican party’s power reduces.
- DuskStar 7y agoWhat would your theoretical Democrats do differently?
- jaredklewis 7y ago
- seraphsf 7y agoSummary from the excellent, erudite Twitter thread (https://mobile.twitter.com/DrTELS/status/1151868725336952832 https://mobile.twitter.com/DrTELS/status/1151868725336952832) cited in the article: Why should we be worried? Peat shouldn't be available to burn. It only burns when it has been disturbed by some significant environmental change (e.g. drainage/drought). Siberian peatlands should be moist/frozen through summer, but this year's heatwave has dried them out. Peat fires in the Arctic are part of a number of positive feedback mechanisms in the climate system. They release old carbon in the form of CO2 & methane emissions, exacerbating global heating, and they leave behind a dark charred surface leading to localised heating. Some tentative conclusions: - at least some of these fires were ignited by lightning - ignition made far more likely by heatwave - fires are burning peat soils - this is the symptom of a sick Arctic
- singularity2001 7y agoThis kind of Question might be unpopular but do those wildfires have any quantitative relevance in accelerating global warming? Or ask differently how much of Siberia would have to burn to make any noticeable difference In the CO2 balance
- adrianN 7y agoThese fires substantially accelerate the melting of the permafrost, both by the primary heat of combustion, but also by secondary effects like soot. Permafrost stores about 1500 Gigatons of carbon. Humanity has released about 650 Gigatons of carbon in total so far.
- konschubert 7y agoWill all those 1500 Gigatons be released when the permafrost melts?
- simonh 7y agoI wouldn't think so, simply being melted doesn't mean it's released, but the decay processes triggered by the melting and now apparently wildfires will start eating into it. It's likely very difficult to predict what proportion would eventually be released and over what time frame. However it wouldn't take much in the grand scheme of things to negate any reductions in CO2 release we manage to make as a civilization, more or less maintaining the total current CO2 release levels indefinitely. That's a pretty worrying scenario by itself.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoCan I presume that the models used to make predictions about climate change did not consider this? As a contributor to the process accelerating?
- skosch 7y agoYeah, this absolutely crucial piece of information is missing from most articles like this one, a journalistic failure I find incomprehensible. Anyways, the Woods Hole Research center claims that boreal forest fires are not included in current climate models, and are likely to exacerbate the problem: http://whrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/PB_wildfires.pdf http://whrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/PB_wildfires.pdf
- nicoburns 7y agoI think the models did consider this. And in such models, this is one of the "tipping points" (along with sea ice / glacier ice melting) beyond which it becomes much more difficult to reverse the process.
- tzs 7y agoHere's a good site for visually presenting a lot of different worldwide atmosphere, ocean, and related data: https://earth.nullschool.net/ https://earth.nullschool.net/ Surface particulates is a good view to check for fires: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic=-103.12,34.00,383 https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l... Click on the word "earth" on the lower left to get the options.
- Merrill 7y agoThe lands around the Arctic Ocean are really dry, since the winds off the Arctic Ocean blow over ice much of the year. Therefore, in summer what vegetation there is may rapidly dry out on the surface and burn easily. Once the Arctic Ocean is open more of the year, more precipitation should be delivered to the surrounding areas.
- dontbenebby 7y agoOne interesting fact is that a desert is a place without precipitation - many very cold areas don't have much evaporation and thus don't have much precipitation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_desert
- H8crilA 7y agoThe area around Deadhorse, Alaska (Prudhoe Bay) is technically a desert with an average yearly precipitation of 153 mm. A desert is anything below 250 mm a year. But just look at the map surrounding it - there's thousands of lakes: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prudhoe+Bay,+AK https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prudhoe+Bay,+AK Lakes are supported from below by a thick layer of permafrost which is completely unpenetrable to liquid water. Combined with low evaportation - it is one of the most moist pieces of land on the planet. And a desert at that :)
- konschubert 7y agoThis is the kind of optimistic pessimism that gives me hope.
- marcus_holmes 7y agolikewise. I really struggle with the concept that all the feedback loops are positive and will lead to runaway change. How will the warming of the Arctic affect plant growth? It seems logical to expect lots more plants up there as the permafrost shrinks and exposes more fertile country. Is that a optimism I can cling to? ;)
- ryanmarsh 7y agoIf you'd like to know how imagery like this is discovered in the first place it's worth following NOAA's Daily Significant Imagery report. Which I no longer follow and can't seem to find a working link for right now.
- quakeguy 7y agoAnyone who isn't scared now should read this, idk what comes next, but we, as a species, should prepare for the worst. Sounding alarmist? I hope so, but i fear not.
- leggomylibro 7y agoWhat, were you not already convinced that we're unlikely to last longer than a few more generations? Sure, read about it and get scared all you want. But you can't fix human behavior. Another word for it is 'economics', and that's sort of the problem.
- Ma8ee 7y agoI’m mostly worried about defeatist. Without you I actually think we have a chance to survive this.
- daxfohl 7y agoWithout the defeatists, the optimists, and everybody in between we'd have it licked!
- Ma8ee 7y agoIf everyone with a brain and a conscience would do their best, independently of everyone else, this wouldn’t even be a problem. Now too many uses everyone’s else inaction as an excuse for their own.
- madaxe_again 7y agoYes, if everyone on the titanic had just believed a bit harder then it would have floated. It’s not about inaction being an excuse, it’s about realising that trying to put out a house fire with a water pistol isn’t going to work - particularly if half the neighbourhood is there chucking gasoline on it. I live responsibly, recycle, grow my own food, built my house out of traditional and local materials, plant trees, pay for other people to plant trees. None of it is going to make the damnedest bit of difference, other than mildly soothing my conscience. If I really cared about my impact, I would kill myself. I’ve done the next best thing and had myself sterilised - no children, ever. The world is still going to die. I’ll just be in a happier place when the food riots start.
- H8crilA 7y agoThere's a lot of fires up north, typically about 500 to 800 fires in all of Alaska per year. It is important to realise that fires are a natural part of the ecosystem there. Black spruce (Picea mariana) trees "cause" fires to their own advantage - burning out other trees and then repopulating the area, squeezing out contenders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_mariana#Ecology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_mariana#Ecology The important question is whether there is more fires than usual or less fires than usual. The fact that there are fires carries little information. That being said, this summer in Alaska is indeed exceptionally hot: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/07/06/alaskas-changing-climate https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/07/06/alaskas-c... This summer's exceptional temperature coincided with a bump in black spruce's pollen production causing everything to be covered in yellow: > Spruce trees release pollen annually, but every three to five years there is a natural bump in pollen production. This cyclical process is called masting, and it flushes the forests every few years with spruce seeds, overwhelming seed-eating animals like red squirrels and white-winged crossbills, and thereby ensuring many uneaten seeds go on to germinate.
- Pfhreak 7y agoAre the fires typically peat fires or forest fires? Because right now they are having the former.
- H8crilA 7y agoForest fires. Not sure how common peat fires are - don't know almost anything about them. Looks like a much bigger deal (because it's rare, hence the ecosystem/communities are not prepared to deal with them). Also they're having forest fires too, like every year: http://smoke.alaska.edu/current_fires.html http://smoke.alaska.edu/current_fires.html > Pierre Markuse, a satellite imagery processing guru, has documented some of the blazes attacking the forests and peatlands of the Arctic. I was just there a few weeks ago. Reduced visibility in many places due to smoke, many "thank you firefighters!" signs along the road, helicopters picking up water from some of the millions of Alaskan lakes. It's still a very beautiful place.
- singularity2001 7y agoSatellite images show nothing if JavaScript is disabled. Is there any benign reason why they don’t just use <img src?
- mrmonkeyman 7y agoSmooth animations.
- agumonkey 7y agoYet another positive feedback loop I never thought of.
- chr1 7y agoWe need large scale meat farming in arctic, Pleistocene Park [1] but for commercial purposes. It would restore grasslands that we have destroyed buy driving arctic megafauna to extinction, would prevent peat fire, and uncontrolled melting of permafrost, and would save some of tropical forests from being cut down for meat production. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park
- v8engine 7y agoWhoever developed Gizmodo frontend probably never read any article on it. That's some really bad image load animation. That solid 1 second delay hardcoded in CSS + network delay for lazy loading just leaves the whole article a white canvas while I scroll. Why would you want to re-hide the image after I scroll out of it? Scrolling back up gives me that 1 second penalty to make the image visible. So frustrating.
- emerongi 7y agoDoes anyone have good books to recommend on global warming?
- hadsed 7y agoI recently read, The Uninhabitable Earth. It came out this year I believe, and pulls absolutely no punches... Not even in the title! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41552709-the-uninhabitable-earth https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41552709-the-uninhabitab...
- gdubs 7y agoSame author who wrote the New York Magazine story on Climate Change a little while back, which scared the pants off everyone. Promoted debate over whether fear is a good or bad motivator to get people to change behavior. My personal opinion is that it is. Or at a minimum, the watered down, conservative IPCC narratives really failed to move politicians and the general public.
- perfunctory 7y agoI am now going through "Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm" paper by James Hansen [0]. It seems to give a good overview of the current state of the art. I would second "The Uninhabitable Earth" as well. [0] http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshell.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshel...
- gdubs 7y agoBill McKibben’s “Eaarth” is a good one.