A new study published Wednesday in Nature found that last year’s Canadian wildfires emitted 647 megatons of carbon into the atmosphere. Veuer’s Matt Hoffman has the story.
00:00Wildfires aren't just a symptom of climate change, they may be exacerbating it as well.
00:05That's according to a new study published Wednesday in the science journal Nature.
00:09The study examined last year's Canadian wildfires, which burned about 37 million acres.
00:14It found that those fires emitted 647 megatons of carbon into the atmosphere.
00:20That's more than the national emissions of any single country except for the United States, India, and China.
00:26Study co-author Brendan Byrne says this may make existing climate change targets harder to reach.
00:31If we see these kind of big changes where fires become more common in the boreal forests,
00:36we might not see as much carbon taken up from these natural ecosystems as we expect.
00:40And so keeping the carbon dioxide to a certain level will then require corresponding reductions in the allowable emissions we have.
00:50As to this season, Mark Perrington of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service told NBC News,
00:56monitoring of this year's wildfires are showing that, after 2023, 2024 is already the second highest fire year in the past two decades for Canada in terms of the estimated emissions.
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