The blazes produced more planet-warming carbon than almost any country, researchers found. That could upend key calculations on the pace of global warming.

The wildfires that ravaged Canada’s boreal forests in 2023 produced more planet-warming carbon emissions than the burning of fossil fuels in all but three countries, research published on Wednesday has found.

Only China, the United States and India produced more emissions from fossil fuels than the Canadian fires, according to the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

The wildfires last year call into question how much carbon the forests will absorb in the future, scientists said. That, in turn, may make it necessary to reconsider calculations of how much more greenhouse gas humans can add to the atmosphere without pushing temperatures beyond current global targets.

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  • Nik282000
    1•3 months ago

    By their nature you can’t out-carbon fossil fuels. You’re pitting millions of years of concentrated surface carbon against a few hundreds of years worth.

    To capture all the fossil fuel we burn in a year naturally we would have to grow and then log a whole extra earth of forest.