The burning destruction of Australia’s black summer fires between 2019 and 2020 provided a disastrous view of the extent of the fire in our hottest, driest world and the unprecedented impact of hell is still being measured.
A few weeks ago, scientists observed that the amount of smoke emitted from the fire into the atmosphere rivaled that of a large volcanic eruption. Now, researchers say the giant cloud of smoke was so immense that it moderately warmed the stratosphere for months.
In a new study led by the first author and climate modeler Pengfei Yu of China’s Jinan University, scientists simulated the appearance and evolution of the plume, showing that the worst deteriorating forest fires in Australian history left a lasting impact on the region’s skies.
“Extreme forest fires can inject smoke into the upper troposphere and even into the stratosphere under favorable weather conditions,” the researchers write in their paper. “The higher the smoke is injected, the longer it will persist and the wider its extent.”
In the case of black summer fires, the flames sent nearly a trillion grams (approximately 0.9 teragrams) of smoke particles into the stratosphere, which researchers explain is the largest amount ever documented in the strata. ‘era of satellites.
This mass of smoke was made up of different types of smoke particles, including both organic carbon (OC, which includes brown carbon, also known as BrC), and black carbon (BC).
Each of them has different effects of capturing heat in the atmosphere, being the BC the one that more captures heat, due to the form to heat the surrounding air after absorbing the sunlight.
According to the researchers ’calculations, black summer plumage was made up of about 2.5 percent black carbon, which helped provide a warming effect to the stratosphere that lasted the rest of the year.
“The simulations suggest that the smoke remained in the stratosphere throughout 2020 and that it measured the stratosphere in a measurable way approximately 1-2 K [Kelvin, equivalent here to 1-2 degrees Celsius] for more than six months, ”the team explains.
“Our study shows that the record of fire smoke can cause persistent impacts on stratospheric dynamics and chemistry.”
In addition to warming the stratosphere, the researchers claim that the record smoke event would also have had a diminished effect on ozone levels in the stratosphere, destroying ozone molecules at mid and high latitudes of the southern hemisphere and probably causing the ozone hole. larger temporarily.
Although researchers acknowledge that observations of aerosols that produce stratospheric warming have been made before, it is the first time scientists have measured the phenomenon to this point, given the record production of black summer fires.
The findings are reported in Geophysical research letters.