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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS,
VOL. 33,
L01801,
4 PP., 2006
doi:10.1029/2005GL024707
Global carbon emissions from biomass burning in the 20th century
Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California, USA
Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California, USA
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California, USA
We used a new, 100-year, 1 × 1° global fire map and a carbon cycle model (CASA) to provide a yearly gridded estimate of the temporal trend in carbon emissions due to wildfires through the 20th century. 2700–3325 Tg C y−1 burn at the end of the 20th century, compared to 1500–2700 Tg C y−1 at the beginning, with increasing uncertainty moving backward in time. There have been major changes in the regional distribution of emissions from fires, as a consequence of i) increased burning in tropical savannas and ii) a switch of emissions from temperate and boreal forests towards the tropics. The frequently-used assumption that pre-industrial emissions were 10% of present biomass burning is clearly inadequate, in terms of both the total amount and the spatial distribution of combustion.
Received 23 September 2005; accepted 21 November 2005; published 4 January 2006.
Citation: (2006), Global carbon emissions from biomass burning in the 20th century, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L01801, doi:10.1029/2005GL024707.
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