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Wildfires Spew Carbon, Re-Growth Absorbs It

Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

"They are fundamentally two types of emissions," Wiedinmyer told Discovery News.

Fossil fuels release vast amounts of carbon which has been locked up underground for millions of years, she said. What's worse, fossil fuels offer no mechanism for reabsorbing carbon.

Carbon released from burning plants during wildfires, on the other hand, is carbon that was absorbed from the atmosphere by the plants in recent decades. After a fire the re-growth of burned lands re-absorbs large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. So there is essentially no net increase in carbon to the atmosphere over the course of decades.

"The biosphere is like a sponge," said carbon emissions researcher Jason Neff of the University of Colorado, who is Wiedinmyer's coauthor. The biosphere absorbs carbon until it is filled, then fires squeeze the carbon back out, he said.

The size of the sponge could be changing in some places where earlier spring melts caused by global warming are tied to greater wildfire frequency, said climate researcher Anthony Westerling of the University of California at Merced.

That's the case in the northern Rockies, he said, as well as parts of California's Sierra Nevada. Changes in the frequency of fires could, in turn, lead to entirely different plant communities taking over -- some of which may absorb less carbon, he said.

Can the carbon budget be balanced?

Howstuffworks.com: Wildfires

NASA satellite images of the California wildfires