The world is on fire

A huge wildfire is raging in Greenland. 150 km from the Arctic Circle and just 50 km away from Greenland’s ice sheet, large swathes of tundra have been burning for over a week.

Nobody has seen anything like this in recent times.

Satellite imagery of Greenland, 50 km from the ice sheet, 3rd August 2017

In the last few years, catastrophic fires have been increasing around the world. From Indonesia to Canada, across South America and Africa, from Southern Europe into Siberia, and now Greenland too. Many are fatal. 

As you read this, over 1 million hectares of Russia are on fire. Forest fires of this scale are unmanageable and blazes like these have become the new normal in Russia.

Forest fires blazing in Siberia, 2016

Why do they keep getting worse?

Lack of forest management, insufficient funds for prevention and firefighting are partly to blame. But climate change is the real problem. The fire season in the boreal forests is getting longer every year. Hotter, drier weather spells make fire spread faster.

Fires like these aren’t just devastating because of the loss of forests, they also directly contribute to furthering climate change. As well as being massive emitters of carbon dioxide, satellite images show how the smoke from forest fires in Siberia travels north and reaches the Arctic. Black carbon pollutes the ice and makes it melt even faster.  

Smoke from forest fires in Siberia on 7th August 2017, NASA satellite image

It’s a feedback loop of destruction. Increased wildfires lead to more rapid climate change which in turn, leads to more wildfires.

Forest fires are one of the most significant sources of CO2 emissions after fossil fuels. We can’t afford to ignore this problem if we want to effectively stop climate change.

 Volunteer firefighters in Russia, 2016 

The impact of wildland fires on climate change hasn’t been properly acknowledged yet. The global threat posed by wildfires is underestimated. If we want to win this fight, we need to change government policies and raise the public’s perception of the problem. That starts with awareness. Share this blog to make the world listen.