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Vast CO2 release from Australian fires in 2019–2020 constrained by satellite
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Vast CO2 release from Australian fires in 2019–2020 constrained by satellite
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Vast CO2 release from Australian fires in 2019–2020 constrained by satellite
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Journal Article
Vast CO2 release from Australian fires in 2019–2020 constrained by satellite
2021
Overview
Southeast Australia experienced intensive and geographically extensive wildfires during the 2019–2020 summer season
1
,
2
. The fires released substantial amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
3
. However, existing emission estimates based on fire inventories are uncertain
4
, and vary by up to a factor of four for this event. Here we constrain emission estimates with the help of satellite observations of carbon monoxide
5
, an analytical Bayesian inversion
6
and observed ratios between emitted carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide
7
. We estimate emissions of carbon dioxide to be 715 teragrams (range 517–867) from November 2019 to January 2020. This is more than twice the estimate derived by five different fire inventories
8
–
12
, and broadly consistent with estimates based on a bottom-up bootstrap analysis of this fire episode
13
. Although fires occur regularly in the savannas in northern Australia, the recent episodes were extremely large in scale and intensity, burning unusually large areas of eucalyptus forest in the southeast
13
. The fires were driven partly by climate change
14
,
15
, making better-constrained emission estimates particularly important. This is because the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide may become increasingly dependent on fire-driven climate–carbon feedbacks, as highlighted by this event
16
.
The amount of carbon dioxide released by the Australian wildfires of 2019–2020 is uncertain, but is estimated here using satellite observations of carbon monoxide to be more than twice the amount suggested by fire inventories.
