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El Nino Fires A Key Source Of Greenhouse Gases

Posted by timothy on from the where-there's-smoke-there's-CO2 dept.

core plexus writes "Science Daily has an interesting article suggesting that El Nino-related fires may be a significant source of 'Greenhouse Gases.' By combining satellite data and measurements of atmospheric gases, they have quantified for the first time the amount of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, emitted by these fires. In addition, the scientists determined that almost all of the increased levels of methane measured during 1997 and 1998 can be attributed to the worldwide fires at the time, underscoring the impact El Nino has on methane emissions."

4 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. International Characters by capoccia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Slashdot really needs better unicode/international character support. An "n" is not the same as an "n" with a tilde or even "n~".

    Slashdot doesn't let you enter the pound symbol. Imagine writing about prices where every time you wanted to say $, you had to spell out dollar in order for people to know what you were talking about.

    Typographic symbols like dashes, quotes and elipses are all missing.

    http://alistapart.com/articles/emen/

  2. Fluctuations vs. trends by Phronesis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's important to be clear that El Nino-induced fires can account for short-term variations (interannual, or so). However, the things that burn only have carbon to emit because they extracted it from the atmosphere, so this result has no effect on the interpretation of CO2 trends over longer time scales.

  3. Re:More evidence on the pile by Phronesis · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The difference is that the plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere for several years, then return it to the atmosphere when they burn. It's a closed cycle with no net growth of atmospheric CO2.

    There is no corresponding cycle to balance burning fossil fuels over the short term, so the more fossil fuels we burn, the longer the residence time of CO2 molecules, and the greater the concentration.

    If you look at charts of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, you see annual cycles, ENSO cycles, and other short term fluctuations, but these are all superimposed on a much larger trend, which is unmistakably due to human intervention.

    ENSO has been around for millennia, but somehow despite all these fires, the atmospheric CO2 concentration rose slowly over the past 10,000 years from around 270 parts per million at the end of the last ice age to 290 parts per million a century ago. Since then, it's climbed rapidly to around 360 parts per million---much greater than it's ever been in the 500,000 years for which we have reliable records.

    Is your snide comment about Kyoto supposed to indicate that El Nino did nothing drastic to CO2 for over 10,000 years and then just coincidentally happened to have a big effect that exactly correlated with human use of fossil fuels?

  4. Mao and the tale of the many dead birds... by silentbozo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If I recall, Mao declared a certain sparrow a pest (the propaganda was that the bird was stealing valuable grain) so they embarked on a nationwide campaign to exterminate the bird. Little kids beat pans to drive birds away from their nesting sites, hunters used nets, rocks, etc. Of course, it turned out the sparrow was a needed predator, to control the insects that eventually ravaged their grain crops...

    The question is, what does this have to do with El Nino?