RI bushfires in 1997 blamed for massive carbon emissions

RI bushfires in 1997 blamed for massive carbon emissions

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Leicester, England

Devastating fires running out of control in Indonesia
significantly contributed to the biggest annual increase of
carbon emissions into the atmosphere since records began,
scientists say.

A report in the science journal, Nature, said that between
1997 and 1998 wildfires in Indonesia released into the atmosphere
up to 2.6 million tons of carbon - mostly in the form of carbon
dioxide.

The 1997 Indonesian fires spewed as much carbon into the
atmosphere as the entire planet's biosphere removes from it in a
year, the research showed.

Most of the carbon came not from burning trees, but from
smoldering peat bogs that lost between 25 and 85 centimeters of
their depth in the fires, Susan Page and her colleagues at the
University of Leicester estimated.

In Borneo alone, burning spread across 8,000 square kilometers
of swamp forest in Central Kalimantan, and probably consumed
about 33 percent - 60,000 square kilometers - of Indonesia's peat
bogs overall. The release contributed significantly to the
largest annual increase in carbon emissions in a single year from
1997 to 1998 since records began, the authors concluded.

Their results are backed up by similar findings in an analysis
of the effects of the wildfires on the composition of trace gases
in the atmosphere.

That research was published in the journal Global
Biogeochemical Cycles by Ray Langenfelds, of the Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in
Aspendale, Australia, and colleagues.

The two papers show that catastrophic events affecting small
areas can evidently have a huge impact on the global carbon
balance, according to an article by two other climate experts,
David Schimel and David Baker at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in the United States.