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Black carbon attribution

Nature volume 612, pages E18–E19 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 21 December 2022

The Original Article was published on 06 October 2021

arising from J. R. McConnell et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03858-9 (2021).

Refracted black carbon (rBC), measured in polar ice cores, can be used to infer historical levels of biomass burning from terrestrial sources. McConnell et al.1 compared rBC levels from Antarctic ice-core records with selected palaeoecological records from nearby Patagonia and more-distant Tasmania and southern New Zealand, and concluded that burning by early Polynesian (Māori) settlers in New Zealand dwarfed other preindustrial carbon emissions in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere during the past 2,000 years. However, closer scrutiny of existing palaeoecological records shows that all of these regions probably contributed to the peak rBC levels. This distinction is important, because it enables the hemispheric-scale environmental impacts on the remote Southern Hemisphere to be attributed to multiple societies that engaged in biomass burning, rather than to a single cultural phase.

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Acknowledgements

I acknowledge informative discussions with G. Dunbar and R. McKay, and thank D. Lowe, P. Pliscoff, W. Henriquez and I. Jara for their comments on the manuscript.

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  1. School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Rewi M. Newnham

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Correspondence to Rewi M. Newnham.

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Newnham, R.M. Black carbon attribution. Nature 612, E18–E19 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05518-y

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