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Australian bush fires belched out immense quantity of carbon

The 2019–20 wildfires generated 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide — but a lot of that might have been mopped up by phytoplankton in the ocean.
  1. Smriti Mallapaty
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The extreme bush fires that blazed across southeastern Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 released 715 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air — more than double the emissions previously estimated from satellite data, according to an analysis1 published today in Nature.

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Nature 597, 459-460 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02509-3

References

  1. van der Velde, I. R. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03712-y (2021).

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  2. Tang, W. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03805-8 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Bowman, D. M. J. S., Williamson, G. J., Price, O. F., Ndalila, M. N. & Bradstock, R. A. Plant Cell Environ. https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.13916 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

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