Responses of wildfire-induced global black carbon pollution and radiative forcing to climate change

Abstract

The impacts of climate change on wildfires have been studied extensively. Along with declining emissions from fossil fuel combustion due to anthropogenic emission control, black carbon (BC) released from wildfires is expected to contribute a more significant portion to its atmospheric burden. However, from a global perspective, little is known about the BC burden and radiative forcing caused by wildfires. Here, we report the results from the long-term wildfire-induced BC concentration and direct radiative forcing (DRF) from 1981 to 2010 globally simulated by an Earth System Model using an updated wildfire BC emission inventory. We show that wildfire-induced BC concentration and DRF varied significantly spatially and temporarily, with the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, attributable to its highest level of wildfire BC emission worldwide. The temporal trends of near-surface air temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration and their association with wildfire-induced BC concentration are explored using the multidimensional ensemble empirical mode decomposition. A statistically significant relation between changes in climate parameters and wildfire-induced BC concentration was found for 53% of the land grid cells, explaining on average 33% of the concentration variations. The result suggests that the wildfire-induced BC DRF, with an increasing trend, would be an important contributor to climate change, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Occurrences of wildfires in the Amazon Basin respond most strongly to climate change and play an increasingly important role in changing the global climate.

Keywords

• black carbon
• wildfire
• CESM
• climate change