Over the last six weeks, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) has tracked over 100 intense and long-lived wildfires in the Arctic Circle. In June alone, these fires emitted 50 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is equivalent to Sweden’s total annual emissions. This is more than was released by Arctic fires in the same month between 2010 and 2018 put together.

Although wildfires are common in the northern hemisphere between May and October, the latitude and intensity of these fires, as well as the length of time that they have been burning for, has been particularly unusual. CAMS, which is implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the EU, incorporates observations of wildfires from the MODIS instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites into its Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) to monitor the fires and estimate the emission of pollutants from them.

The Fire Radiative Power – a measure of heat output from wildfires shown in June for 2019 (red) and the 2003–2018 average (grey).

Wildfires emit different types of pollutants, many of which can affect our health. And even though most of the Arctic Circle remains sparsely populated, humans cannot escape the dangers of these fires; wind can blow pollution thousands of kilometres away from its source, affecting air quality around the world.

CAMS forecast of small particulate matter from wildfires in Ontario, Canada, visualised on the Windy platform.

“CAMS estimates of fire emissions are combined with the ECMWF weather forecast system to predict how the weather will cause pollution to move around the world to affect global atmospheric composition,” explains CAMS Senior Scientist and wildfires expert, Mark Parrington. “This information helps countries, businesses and individuals to plan for the negative effects of air pollution.”

The ongoing Arctic fires have been most severe in Alaska and Siberia, where some have been large enough to cover almost 100 000 football pitches, or the whole of Lanzarote. In Alberta, Canada, one fire is estimated to have been bigger than 300 000 pitches. In Alaska alone, CAMS has registered almost 400 wildfires this year, with new ones igniting every day.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of a fire in Alaska. [Credit: Pierre Markuse]

CAMS data on wildfire activity going back 17 years suggest that wildfire activity in the Arctic Circle is most common in July and August.

“It is unusual to see fires of this scale and duration at such high latitudes in June,” continues Parrington. “But temperatures in the Arctic have been increasing at a much faster rate than the global average, and warmer conditions encourage fires to grow and persist once they have been ignited.”

Heat output from fires throughout June 2019. A particularly large number of fires can be seen in Russia, Canada and Alaska.