Continental-Scale Partitioning of Fire Emissions During the 1997 to 2001 El Niño/La Niña Period
Guido R. van der Werf,1*
James T. Randerson,2
G. James Collatz,3
Louis Giglio,4
Prasad S. Kasibhatla,5
Avelino F. Arellano, Jr.,5
Seth C. Olsen,2
Eric S. Kasischke6
During the 1997 to 1998 El Niño, drought conditions triggered widespread increases in fire activity, releasing CH4 and CO2 to the atmosphere. We evaluated the contribution of fires from different continents to variability in these greenhouse gases from 1997 to 2001, using satellite-based estimates of fire activity, biogeochemical modeling, and an inverse analysis of atmospheric CO anomalies. During the 1997 to 1998 El Niño, the fire emissions anomaly was 2.1 ± 0.8 petagrams of carbon, or 66 ± 24% of the CO2 growth rate anomaly. The main contributors were Southeast Asia (60%), Central and South America (30%), and boreal regions of Eurasia and North America (10%).
1 U.S. Department of Agriculture–Foreign Agricultural Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration–Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA-GSFC), Code 923, Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
2 Divisions of Geological and Planetary Sciences and Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, Mail Stop 100-23, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
3 NASA-GSFC, Code 923, Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
4 Science Systems and Applications, Inc., NASA-GSFC, Code 923, Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
5 Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
6 Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Present address: Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, 3212 Croul Hall, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: guido{at}ltpmailx.gsfc.nasa.gov
