{"id":77232,"date":"2026-03-03T10:30:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=77232"},"modified":"2026-03-03T10:30:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T17:30:55","slug":"permafrost-carbon-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/permafrost-carbon-wildfires\/","title":{"rendered":"Permafrost is key to carbon storage. That makes northern wildfires even more dangerous"},"content":{"rendered":"

The devastating wildfires in northern Canada in recent years have climate consequences that go far\u00a0beyond\u00a0smoke and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, according to a new study<\/a> co-authored by two NAU researchers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study, which looked at the various effects of fire in northern Canada and Alaska,\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0all\u00a0bad news: The researchers found fires in Canada, when coupled with snowpack, have a net cooling effect. That cooling, however,\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0enough to outweigh the\u00a0warming effects of\u00a0permafrost carbon released into the atmosphere\u00a0from fires in Alaska.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study, which NAU professor\u00a0<\/span>Scott Goetz\u00a0<\/span><\/b>called \u201cthe most comprehensive attempt to date to\u00a0<\/span>document the myriad factors that\u00a0play a role in the influence of fire on the climate system,\u201d confirms what more localized research has found and reaffirms the need for land and fire managers to reconsider how wildland fires are managed.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hot on the trail<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

The research, led by\u00a0Max Van\u00a0Gerrevink, a doctoral student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and his doctoral adviser,\u00a0<\/span>Sander\u00a0Veraverbeke<\/span>, was conceived of on a smaller scale two decades ago by a small consortium of environmental scientists. This\u00a0group\u00a0included\u00a0Goetz, a Regents\u2019 professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, and\u00a0<\/span>Michelle Mack<\/span><\/b>, Regents\u2019 professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the\u00a0Center\u00a0for Ecosystem Science and Society. The ideas were shared with colleagues and passed down to postdocs and students, including senior author Brendan Rogers, a scientist at\u00a0the\u00a0Woodwell Climate Research\u00a0Center\u00a0and a former postdoc of Goetz.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Researchers combined historical fire records, satellite and climate data with machine learning, then quantified and mapped the net long-term climate impacts from multiple sources for fires across Alaska and western Canada between 2001 and 2019. The results indicate that, on average, Alaskan fires contribute to climate warming, whereas fires in Canada generally have a climate-cooling effect. The findings were published in Nature Geoscience<\/a> on March 3.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the majority of northern forest fires in North America are currently exerting a climate-cooling influence, this is likely to change as northern forests continue to warm,\u201d\u00a0Van\u00a0Gerrevink\u00a0said. \u201cContinued warming is expected to reduce snow cover and shorten its duration,\u00a0which\u00a0may substantially alter the net climate impacts of future fires as it reduces the dominant cooling source from increased reflectivity from snow.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Different\u00a0fires, different\u00a0outcomes<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Alaska and Canada have different biomes.\u00a0Unlike Alaska, much of Canada was covered by glaciers, and\u00a0it\u00a0contains\u00a0extensive areas of\u00a0tundra, which burns less\u00a0frequently\u00a0than its\u00a0boreal\u00a0forests\u00a0(also known as taiga).\u00a0As a result, the fires in Canada,\u00a0even\u00a0in the\u00a0record-breaking\u00a0fire seasons of 2023 and 2025,\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0lead to significant permafrost thaw, though the smoke and environmental damage still was devastating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s\u00a0more, when the burned areas were covered in snow,\u00a0more\u00a0light\u00a0was\u00a0reflected off the snow instead of being absorbed by the ground, which\u00a0led to a net cooling effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Alaska,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0more vulnerable\u00a0permafrost, so when fires rip through the region\u00a0and\u00a0permafrost thaws,\u00a0huge amounts\u00a0of stored carbon are released into the atmosphere, leading to more climate warming.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s\u00a0bad enough on its own, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0potentially much worse.\u00a0Mack\u00a0said about 70% of the terrestrial Arctic is in Siberia and Eurasia, and it looks more like Alaska than it does Canada. That means if those areas burn,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0likely to see significant permafrost thaw and the resulting release of carbon into the atmosphere.<\/span><\/p>\n

Major takeaways<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n

Fire happens. Most of the fires studied were caused naturally\u00a0by increasing lightning strikes\u00a0and happening in areas away from people, so decision-makers\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0likely to do much fire suppression. It is time to discuss other options, both Mack and Goetz said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a call that we really have to take this seriously\u2014the more fires there are, the more rapidly permafrost is going to thaw,\u201d Mack said. \u201cMaybe we\u00a0need to think about slowing down these natural fires. It would buy us time while we figure out other solutions to decarbonize the atmosphere.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne clear takeaway is that fire managers and fire suppression efforts could attempt to prioritize fighting fires in areas that are permafrost-rich, because that\u2019s where the bulk of the carbon is stored and vulnerable post-fire,\u201d Goetz\u00a0added. \u201cWhen rich organic soils are combusted in fires, there is a big pulse of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Then,\u00a0as permafrost thaw follows,\u00a0it continues to emit more carbon over the years that follow fire.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/p>\n

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The devastating wildfires in northern Canada in recent years have climate consequences that go far\u00a0beyond\u00a0smoke and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, according to a new study co-authored by two NAU researchers. The study, which looked at the various effects of fire in northern Canada and Alaska,\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0all\u00a0bad news: The researchers found fires in Canada, when…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":77233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}