Fire bans not effective as the Amazon and Pantanal burn, study says
In August 2019, the number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon skyrocketed, making international headlines and prompting protests in cities like London, Paris and Toronto. While the global community was shocked by images of burning trees and animals, in Brazil, the arrival of the smoke in the country’s business capital and largest city, São Paulo, made the urban population suddenly wake up to the problem.
The crisis also drew the attention of the scientific community, which has since invested more effort into creating tools and data to understand the dynamics of fire in the Amazon, a biome not naturally adapted to burning. “All this caused a stir among researchers, who began to ask themselves, ‘What is going on?’” Manoela Machado, a researcher with the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, told Mongabay.
George Woodwell, 95, influential ecologist on climate change, dies
The founder of the renowned Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, he also helped shape U.S. policies on controlling toxic substances like DDT.
George M. Woodwell, the founder of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and a renowned ecologist whose keen research and understanding of policy shaped how the United States controlled toxic substances and how the world confronted climate change, died on Tuesday at his home in Woods Hole, Mass. He was 95.
The research center, which Dr. Woodwell started in 1985 to study global climate change, and which was later renamed for him, announced his death in a statement.
During his long career, Dr. Woodwell repeatedly shined a light on how the byproducts of new technologies — devised to increase efficiency in the agriculture, forestry and energy industries — had endangered natural systems. His research provided early evidence of what he called “biotic impoverishment” — the steady weakening of plants, animals and ecosystems that are chronically exposed to synthetic pollutants.
Continue reading on The New York Times.
George Woodwell, leader in climate studies, dies at 95
In discussing his 2016 book, “A World to Live In,” George M. Woodwell saw possibility in the often bleak world of climate science.
“The only course at the moment is to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, a perfectly attractive and possible and financially attractive, lucrative transition,” he explained to Steve Curwood of the “Living on Earth” radio show. “It’s not a dream, but it is a dream world. It’s a world that everyone would like to live in, and it’s a clean world in which human rights are protected, the common property resources of air, water, and land are cherished and defended, and industries have a purpose, a primary purpose, which is the quality of the public realm.”
Known as an optimist and a visionary leader in the environmental sciences—one whose work not only advanced his own research in ecology and climate, but also launched an entirely new field of scientific discovery, George Masters Woodwell died at his home in Woods Hole on June 18. He was 95.
Read more on The Falmouth Enterprise.
Fires in Brazil wetlands surge to record start in 2024
As Jose Cleiton and Brandao Amilton ride their horses into the vastness of the Pantanal grassy wetlands of Brazil, a wall of smoke towers from the horizon far into the sky above.
The worst of the dry season is still far off, but already these Brazilian wetlands are so dry that wildfires are surging.
The number of Pantanal fires so far this year has jumped tenfold from the same period last year according to Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE).
An Alaska wildlife refuge is changing its wildfire strategy to limit carbon emissions
If blazes break out in parts of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, firefighters will protect the layers of forest floor and permafrost that hold carbon
Baked with the around-the-clock summer sunlight and regularly peppered with lightning strikes, the Yukon Flats region in eastern Interior Alaska is regularly set ablaze with fires that are considered part of the natural forest cycle. Standard practice is to let them burn out on their own, unless they threaten people, their homes or other economically valuable property.
That is set to change this summer.
Continue reading on Alaska Beacon.
Climate records keep getting shattered. Here is what you need to know
Month after month, global temperatures are setting new records. Meanwhile, scientists and climate policymakers warn of the growing likelihood that the planet will soon exceed the warming target set at the landmark Paris 2015 climate talks.
Making sense of the run of climate extremes may be challenging for some. Here’s a look at what scientists are saying.
Read more on Associated Press News.
Traders are bracing for a record-smashing summer that will shake up commodities
Around the world, people are already living through the havoc brought on by global temperatures that are breaking records. It’s about to get a lot worse.
Odds are growing that 2024 will become the hottest year in history as the Northern Hemisphere barrels into summer. Prices for some of the world’s most vital commodities — natural gas, power and staple crops like wheat and soy — are climbing. The world of shipping, already thrown into chaos from the Red Sea to the Panama Canal, is likely to be rocked again by parched waterways. And the potential for destructive wildfires is increasing.
Read more from the article by Bloomberg News.
The world is ignoring the other kind of deadly carbon
Not only is black carbon terrible for human health, but ever-fiercer wildfires are covering the Arctic with the dark particles, accelerating melting.
Once again, vast expanses of Canadian wilderness are on fire, threatening towns and forcing thousands to flee. It appears to be a breakout of “zombie fires”: wildfires from last year that never actually went out completely but carried on smoldering underground, reigniting ground vegetation again this year. They’ve been pouring smoke—once again—into northern cities in the United States. That haze is loaded with a more obscure form of carbon, compared to its famous cousin CO2: black carbon. By May 16, the fires’ monthly carbon emissions surpassed 15 megatons, soaring above previous years.