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The effects of global warming are starting to show in the Arctic
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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Global warming has unexpected consequences: now the main danger comes from fires in the tundra, writes Paolo Virtuani in an article published on the website of the newspaper Corriere della Sera.
"In 2007, the largest fire in the Arctic tundra on record released into the atmosphere as much carbon dioxide as had been stored in the permafrost of the entire tundra over the previous 50 years. The fire occurred in the Anaktuvuk River area, in the Brooks Mountain Range in northern Alaska. The Anaktuvuk fire turned an area of 1,039 square kilometers into ash, releasing 2.3 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere," the publication writes.
"The effects of global warming are beginning to manifest themselves in increasingly northern latitudes of the planet. The greatest concern is the melting of permafrost. But the main thing is not that as a result of melting the soil becomes soft and mud-like, and buildings erected in such zones lose stability. What worries climatologists most is that the permafrost of the tundra has accumulated enormous amounts of carbon and methane in the form of ice for thousands of years, which are released into the atmosphere during the melting process. Methane, as a greenhouse gas, is tens of times more dangerous than carbon monoxide. With global warming, in addition to the release of these gases, the danger of fires, such as the one in Alaska in 2007, is seriously increasing," the author of the article reports.
"The impact of fires on the fragile tundra ecosystem is still poorly understood. But Arctic summers are becoming longer and drier. The Anaktuvuk fire was caused by lightning. You would expect a fire that starts in moist soil such as thawing permafrost to burn out quickly. But the summer of 2007 was particularly dry, says a study published in the scientific journal Nature, and the fire continued to burn for weeks before strong winds fanned the flames in September. "We haven't seen such a large fire in the Arctic tundra in 10,000 years," says Michelle Mack of the University of Florida. Given the vast area of tundra in the Northern Hemisphere, the study published in Nature is the first to raise the alarm about the environmental bomb that tundra fires could cause. Scientists say the greenhouse gas emissions from such fires could be many times greater than those from industrialized and developing countries. countries," the article notes.