Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Carbon cycle

The wildfire factor

Nature volume 420, pages 29–30 (2002)Cite this article

Events such as wildfires, occurring on a tiny area of the globe, can have a huge impact on the global carbon cycle. This much is plain from investigation of the terrible fires that afflicted Indonesia five years ago.

In 1997–98, the growth rate of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled, reaching the highest on record. As even casual television viewers could have guessed, a contribution to the increase might have come from the wildfires occurring in Indonesia at that time, which burned for months and were widely shown around the world. On page 61 of this issue1, Page et al. go beyond guesses, and calculate that in fact much of the inferred increase in atmospheric CO2 can be accounted for by these fires. The authors estimate the emissions to have been 0.8–2.6 × 1015 grams — petagrams (Pg) or gigatonnes — of carbon. This is equivalent to 13–40% of the annual emissions from anthropogenic fossil-fuel combustion.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The CO2 pulse of 1997–98 from Southeast Asia.

References

  1. Page, S. E. et al. Nature 420, 61–65 (2002).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Langenfelds, R. L. et al. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles [online] 16, 1048 (2002) (doi: 10.1029/2001GB001466).

    ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Gurney, K. R. et al. Nature 415, 626–630 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Joos, F., Meyer, R., Bruno, M. & Leuenberger, M. Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 1437–1440 (1999).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Bachelet, D., Neilson, R. P., Lenihan, J. M. & Drapek, R. J. Ecosystems 3, 164–185 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. GLOBALVIEW-CO2: Cooperative Atmospheric Data Integration Project — Carbon Dioxide (NOAA CMDL, Boulder, Colorado, 2002). Available at ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/GLOBALVIEW

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, 80305, Colorado, USA

    David Schimel & David Baker

Authors
  1. David Schimel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. David Baker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schimel, D., Baker, D. The wildfire factor. Nature 420, 29–30 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/420029a

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/420029a

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing