scholarly journals Fire in ice: two millennia of Northern Hemisphere fire history from the Greenland NEEM ice core

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 809-857 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Zennaro ◽  
N. Kehrwald ◽  
J. R. McConnell ◽  
S. Schüpbach ◽  
O. Maselli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Black Carbon ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past 2000 Years ◽  
Isotopic Analyses ◽  
Fire Activity

Abstract. Biomass burning is a major source of greenhouse gases and influences regional to global climate. Pre-industrial fire-history records from black carbon, charcoal and other proxies provide baseline estimates of biomass burning at local to global scales, but there remains a need for broad-scale fire proxies that span millennia in order to understand the role of fire in the carbon cycle and climate system. We use the specific biomarker levoglucosan, and multi-source black carbon and ammonium concentrations to reconstruct fire activity from the North Greenland Eemian (NEEM) ice cores (77.49° N; 51.2° W, 2480 m a.s.l.) over the past 2000 years. Increases in boreal fire activity (1000–1300 CE and 1500–1700 CE) over multi-decadal timescales coincide with the most extensive central and northern Asian droughts of the past two millennia. The NEEM biomass burning tracers coincide with temperature changes throughout much of the past 2000 years except for during the extreme droughts, when precipitation changes are the dominant factor. Many of these multi-annual droughts are caused by monsoon failures, thus suggesting a connection between low and high latitude climate processes. North America is a primary source of biomass burning aerosols due to its relative proximity to the NEEM camp. During major fire events, however, isotopic analyses of dust, back-trajectories and links with levoglucosan peaks and regional drought reconstructions suggest that Siberia is also an important source of pyrogenic aerosols to Greenland.

scholarly journals Fire in ice: two millennia of boreal forest fire history from the Greenland NEEM ice core

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 1905-1924 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Zennaro ◽  
N. Kehrwald ◽  
J. R. McConnell ◽  
S. Schüpbach ◽  
O. J. Maselli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Black Carbon ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
High Latitude ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Back Trajectories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Isotopic Analyses ◽  
Fire Activity

Abstract. Biomass burning is a major source of greenhouse gases and influences regional to global climate. Pre-industrial fire-history records from black carbon, charcoal and other proxies provide baseline estimates of biomass burning at local to global scales spanning millennia, and are thus useful to examine the role of fire in the carbon cycle and climate system. Here we use the specific biomarker levoglucosan together with black carbon and ammonium concentrations from the North Greenland Eemian (NEEM) ice cores (77.49° N, 51.2° W; 2480 m a.s.l) over the past 2000 years to infer changes in boreal fire activity. Increases in boreal fire activity over the periods 1000–1300 CE and decreases during 700–900 CE coincide with high-latitude NH temperature changes. Levoglucosan concentrations in the NEEM ice cores peak between 1500 and 1700 CE, and most levoglucosan spikes coincide with the most extensive central and northern Asian droughts of the past millennium. Many of these multi-annual droughts are caused by Asian monsoon failures, thus suggesting a connection between low- and high-latitude climate processes. North America is a primary source of biomass burning aerosols due to its relative proximity to the Greenland Ice Cap. During major fire events, however, isotopic analyses of dust, back trajectories and links with levoglucosan peaks and regional drought reconstructions suggest that Siberia is also an important source of pyrogenic aerosols to Greenland.

scholarly journals Boreal fire records in Northern Hemisphere ice cores: A review

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Legrand ◽  
Joseph McConnell ◽  
Hubertus Fischer ◽  
Eric W. Wolff ◽  
Susanne Preunkert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Organic Carbon ◽  
Black Carbon ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Forest Fires ◽  
Greenland Ice Sheet ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Fire Activity

Abstract. Here we review different attempts made since the early 1990s to reconstruct past forest fire activity using chemical signals recorded in ice cores extracted from the Greenland ice sheet and at a few mid-northern latitude, high-elevation glaciers. We first examined the quality of various inorganic (ammonium, nitrate, potassium) and organic (black carbon, various organic carbon compounds including levoglucosan and numerous carboxylic acids) species proposed as fire proxies in ice, particularly in Greenland. We discuss limitations in their use with respect to the considered time period (recent versus pre-industrial times), their atmospheric lifetime, and the relative importance of other non-biomass burning sources. Different high-resolution records obtained at several Greenland drill sites and covering various timescales, including the last century and Holocene, are discussed. We explore the extent to which atmospheric transport can modulate the record of boreal fires from Canada as recorded in Greenland ice. Ammonium, organic fractions (black carbon as well as organic carbon), and organic compounds like formate and vanillic acid are found to be good proxies for tracing past boreal fires in Greenland ice. We show that use of other species – potassium, nitrate, and carboxylates (except formate) – is complicated by either post-depositional effects or existence of large non-biomass-burning sources. The quality of levoglucosan with respect to other proxies is not addressed here because of the present lack of high-resolution profiles for this species, which does not allow for a fair comparison. Several Greenland ice records of ammonium consistently indicate changing fire activity in Canada in response to past climatic conditions that occurred during the last millennium and since the last large climatic transition. Based on this critical review, we make recommendations for further study to increase reliability of the reconstructed history of forest fires occurring in a given region.

Climatic and human controls on the late Holocene fire history of northern Israel

2013 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine B. Quintana Krupinski ◽  
Jennifer R. Marlon ◽  
Ami Nishri ◽  
Joseph H. Street ◽  
Adina Paytan
Keyword(s):  
Black Carbon ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Lacustrine Sediments ◽  
Population Data ◽  
High Biomass ◽  
Fire Activity

Long-term fire histories provide insight into the effects of climate, ecology and humans on fire activity; they can be generated using accumulation rates of charcoal and soot black carbon in lacustrine sediments. This study uses both charcoal and black carbon, and other paleoclimate indicators from Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), Israel, to reconstruct late Holocene variations in biomass burning and aridity. We compare the fire history data with a regional biomass-burning reconstruction from 18 different charcoal records and with pollen, climate, and population data to decipher the relative impacts of regional climate, vegetation changes, and human activity on fire. We show a long-term decline in fire activity over the past 3070 years, from high biomass burning ~ 3070–1750 cal yr BP to significantly lower levels after ~ 1750 cal yr BP. Human modification of the landscape (e.g., forest clearing, agriculture, settlement expansion and early industry) in periods of low to moderate precipitation appears to have been the greatest cause of high biomass burning during the late Holocene in southern Levant, while wetter climate apparently reduced fire activity during periods of both low and high human activity.

scholarly journals Improved estimates of preindustrial biomass burning reduce the magnitude of aerosol climate forcing in the Southern Hemisphere

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (22) ◽  
pp. eabc1379
Author(s):  
Pengfei Liu ◽  
Jed O. Kaplan ◽  
Loretta J. Mickley ◽  
Yang Li ◽  
Nathan J. Chellman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Southern Hemisphere ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fire Activity

Fire plays a pivotal role in shaping terrestrial ecosystems and the chemical composition of the atmosphere and thus influences Earth’s climate. The trend and magnitude of fire activity over the past few centuries are controversial, which hinders understanding of preindustrial to present-day aerosol radiative forcing. Here, we present evidence from records of 14 Antarctic ice cores and 1 central Andean ice core, suggesting that historical fire activity in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) exceeded present-day levels. To understand this observation, we use a global fire model to show that overall SH fire emissions could have declined by 30% over the 20th century, possibly because of the rapid expansion of land use for agriculture and animal production in middle to high latitudes. Radiative forcing calculations suggest that the decreasing trend in SH fire emissions over the past century largely compensates for the cooling effect of increasing aerosols from fossil fuel and biofuel sources.

scholarly journals Aerosol characteristics at the Southern Great Plains site during the HI-SCALE campaign

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiumeng Liu ◽  
Liz Alexander ◽  
Jerome D. Fast ◽  
Rodica Lindenmaier ◽  
John E. Shilling
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometer ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Radiative Forcing ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Model ◽  
Cloud Formation ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
Numerical Representation ◽  
Southern Great Plains

Abstract. Large uncertainties exist in global climate model predictions of radiative forcing due to insufficient understanding and simplified numerical representation of cloud formation and cloud-aerosol interactions. The Holistic Interactions of Shallow Clouds, Aerosols and Land Ecosystems (HI-SCALE) campaign was conducted near the DOE's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site in north-central Oklahoma to provide a better understanding of land-atmosphere interactions, aerosol and cloud properties, and the influence of aerosol and land-atmosphere interactions on cloud formation. The HI-SCALE campaign consisted of two Intensive Observational Periods (IOPs) (April–May, and August–September, 2016), during which coincident measurements were conducted both on the G-1 aircraft platform and at the SGP ground site. In this study we focus on the observations at the SGP ground site. An Aerodyne HR-ToF Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS) and an Ionicon Proton-Transfer-Reaction Mass Spectrometer (PTR-MS) were deployed, characterizing chemistry of non-refractory aerosol and trace gases, respectively. Contributions from various aerosol sources, including biogenic and biomass burning emissions, were retrieved using factor analysis of the AMS data. In general, the organic aerosols at the SGP site was highly oxidized, with OOA identified as the dominant factor for both the spring and summer IOP though more aged in spring. Cases of IEPOX SOA and biomass burning events were further investigated to understand additional sources of organic aerosol. Unlike other regions largely impacted by IEPOX chemistry, the IEPOX SOA at SGP was more highly oxygenated, likely due to the relatively weak local emissions of isoprene. Biogenic emissions appear to largely control the formation of OA during HI-SCALE campaign. Potential HOM (highly-oxygenated molecule) chemistry likely contributes to the highly-oxygenated feature of aerosols at the SGP site, with impacts on new particle formation and global climate.

scholarly journals Black carbon variability since preindustrial times in Eastern part of Europe reconstructed from Mt Elbrus, Caucasus ice cores

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saehee Lim ◽  
Xavier Faïn ◽  
Patrick Ginot ◽  
Vladimir Mikhalenko ◽  
Stanislav Kutuzov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Black Carbon ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Mass Concentration ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Anthropogenic Emissions ◽  
Ice Core Record ◽  
Summer Time ◽  
Mass Concentrations

Abstract. Black carbon (BC), emitted by fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning, is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide (Bond et al., 2013). However, limited information exists on its past emissions and atmospheric variability. In this study, we present the first high-resolution record of refractory BC (rBC, including mass concentration and size) reconstructed from ice cores drilled at a high-altitude Eastern European site in Mt. Elbrus (ELB), Caucasus (5115 m a.s.l.). The ELB ice core record, covering the period 1825–2013, reflects the atmospheric load of rBC particles at the ELB site transported from the European continent with a larger rBC input from sources located in the Eastern part of Europe. In the first half of the 20th century, European anthropogenic emissions resulted in a 1.5-fold increase in the ice core rBC mass concentrations as respect to its level in the preindustrial era (before 1850). The rBC mass concentrations increased by a 5-fold in 1960–1980, followed by a decrease until ~ 2000. Over the last decade, the rBC signal for summer time slightly increased. We have compared the signal with the atmospheric BC load simulated using past BC emissions (ACCMIP and MACCity inventories) and taken into account the contribution of different geographical region to rBC distribution and deposition at the ELB site. Interestingly, the observed rBC variability in the ELB ice core record since the 1960s is not in perfect agreement with the simulated atmospheric BC load. Similar features between the ice core rBC record and the best scenarios for the atmospheric BC load support that anthropogenic BC increase in the 20th century is reflected in the ELB ice core record. However, the peak in BC mass concentration observed in ~ 1970 in the ice core is estimated to occur a decade later from past inventories. BC emission inventories for the period 1960s–1970s may be underestimating European anthropogenic emissions. Furthermore, for summer time snow layers of the last 2000s, the slightly increasing trend of rBC deposition likely reflects recent changes in anthropogenic and biomass burning BC emissions in the Eastern part of Europe. Our study highlights that the past changes in BC emissions of Eastern Europe need to be considered in assessing on-going air quality regulation.

scholarly journals Introduction to the special issue “Climate of the past 2000 years: regional and trans-regional syntheses”

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 611-615
Author(s):  
Chris S. M. Turney ◽  
Helen V. McGregor ◽  
Pierre Francus ◽  
Nerilie Abram ◽  
Michael N. Evans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Regional Differences ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global View ◽  
Past 2000 Years ◽  
Recent Climate ◽  
Observational Record

Abstract. This PAGES (Past Global Changes) 2k (climate of the past 2000 years working group) special issue of Climate of the Past brings together the latest understanding of regional change and impacts from PAGES 2k groups across a range of proxies and regions. The special issue has emerged from a need to determine the magnitude and rate of change of regional and global climate beyond the timescales accessible within the observational record. This knowledge also plays an important role in attribution studies and is fundamental to understanding the mechanisms and environmental and societal impacts of recent climate change. The scientific studies in the special issue reflect the urgent need to better understand regional differences from a truly global view around the PAGES themes of “Climate Variability, Modes and Mechanisms”, “Methods and Uncertainties”, and “Proxy and Model Understanding”.

scholarly journals What could have caused pre-industrial biomass burning emissions to exceed current rates?

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. van der Werf ◽  
W. Peters ◽  
T. T. van Leeuwen ◽  
L. Giglio
Keyword(s):  
Population Density ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Transport Model ◽  
Ice Core ◽  
Ice Cores ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
Core Data ◽  
Mixing Ratios ◽  
The Past ◽  
Co Concentrations

Abstract. Recent studies based on trace gas mixing ratios in ice cores and charcoal data indicate that biomass burning emissions over the past millennium exceeded contemporary emissions by up to a factor of 4 for certain time periods. This is surprising because various sources of biomass burning are linked with population density, which has increased over the past centuries. We have analysed how emissions from several landscape biomass burning sources could have fluctuated to yield emissions that are in correspondence with recent results based on ice core mixing ratios of carbon monoxide (CO) and its isotopic signature measured at South Pole station (SPO). Based on estimates of contemporary landscape fire emissions and the TM5 chemical transport model driven by present-day atmospheric transport and OH concentrations, we found that CO mixing ratios at SPO are more sensitive to emissions from South America and Australia than from Africa, and are relatively insensitive to emissions from the Northern Hemisphere. We then explored how various landscape biomass burning sources may have varied over the past centuries and what the resulting emissions and corresponding CO mixing ratio at SPO would be, using population density variations to reconstruct sources driven by humans (e.g., fuelwood burning) and a new model to relate savanna emissions to changes in fire return times. We found that to match the observed ice core CO data, all savannas in the Southern Hemisphere had to burn annually, or bi-annually in combination with deforestation and slash and burn agriculture exceeding current levels, despite much lower population densities and lack of machinery to aid the deforestation process. While possible, these scenarios are unlikely and in conflict with current literature. However, we do show the large potential for increased emissions from savannas in a pre-industrial world. This is mainly because in the past, fuel beds were probably less fragmented compared to the current situation; satellite data indicates that the majority of savannas have not burned in the past 10 yr, even in Africa, which is considered "the burning continent". Although we have not considered increased charcoal burning or changes in OH concentrations as potential causes for the elevated CO concentrations found at SPO, it is unlikely they can explain the large increase found in the CO concentrations in ice core data. Confirmation of the CO ice core data would therefore call for radical new thinking about causes of variable global fire rates over recent centuries.

scholarly journals Fire, vegetation and Holocene climate in the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau: a multi-biomarker reconstruction from Paru Co

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Callegaro ◽  
Felipe Matsubara Pereira ◽  
Dario Battistel ◽  
Natalie M. Kehrwald ◽  
Broxton W. Bird ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Vegetation Changes ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Eastern Tibetan Plateau ◽  
The South ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The Past ◽  
High Concentrations

Abstract. The fire history of the Tibetan Plateau over centennial to millennial timescales is still unknown. Recent ice core studies reconstruct fire history over the past few decades but do not extend through the Holocene. Lacustrine sedimentary cores, however, provide continuous records of large-scale and local environmental modifications due to their accumulation of specific organic molecular markers throughout the past millennia. In order to reconstruct Holocene fire events and vegetation changes occurring on the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding areas, we improved and integrated previous analytical methods. The multi-proxy procedure was applied to samples retrieved from Paru Co, a small lake located in the Nyainqentanglha Mountains (29°47'45.6" N; 92°21'07.2" E; 4845 m a.s.l.). The investigated biomarkers include n-alkanes as indicators of vegetation, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as combustion proxies, faecal sterols and stanols (FeSts) as indicators of the presence of humans or grazing animals and finally monosaccharide anhydrides (MAs) as specific markers of vegetation burning processes. Relatively high concentrations of both MAs and PAHs demonstrate intense local biomass burning activity during the early Holocene (10.9–10.7 cal ky BP), which correspond to a drier climate following deglaciation. High concentrations of MAs but not PAHs between 10.7–9 cal ky BP suggest a period of regional biomass burning followed by a decreasing fire trend through the mid-late Holocene. This fire history is consistent with local vegetation changes reconstructed from both n-alkanes and regional pollen records, where vegetation types depend on the centennial-scale intensity of monsoon precipitation. FeSts were below detection limits for most of the samples, suggesting limited direct human influences on fire regime and vegetation changes in the lake's catchment. Climate is the main influence on fire activity recorded in Paru Co over millennial timescales, where biomass burning fluctuates in response to alternating warm/humid and cool/dry periods.

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