Over the past two decades, about a third of the total area of the Arctic and adjacent regions of North America and Eurasia have turned from carbon dioxide absorbers into one of the largest sources of the greenhouse gas emissions, the press service of the American Woodwell Climate Research Center reported.
Scientists came to this conclusion as part of an analysis of data collected in 2001-2020 by 200 climate stations in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Svalbard, the Scandinavian countries, and in the Russian Arctic.
Climatologists combined the results with satellite and aircraft measurements and processed them using a machine learning system. This allowed scientists to create a very detailed map of the "carbon balance" for the entire Arctic and adjacent regions of the two continents and identify the main trends, taking into account the existence of various forms of wildfires that affected these areas of the Earth in 2001-2020.
Subsequent analysis of this map showed that over the first two decades of the current century, about 34% of the territory of the Arctic tundra, northern taiga and swamps turned from CO2 absorbers into sources of this gas, even without taking into account the impact of wildfires on greenhouse gas emissions. With wildfires, this figure increased to 40%, and in some regions of Eurasia, including Scandinavia and many areas of Russian southern Siberia and Chukotka, the volume of emissions grew especially strongly in these two decades, nauka.tass.ru reports.
Alex Shishlo, Editor in Chief of the European Bureau, Rough&Polished
