Zombie Fires: the Apocalypse
I know what you’re thinking. Zombie fires? Is this some kind of joke? I promise you, the threat of zombie fires is truly real and may even hit close to home. From everlasting wildfires to the huge deposits of smoke that such fires send into the atmosphere, the impacts of zombie fires can easily be considered as a precursor to the apocalypse. As zombie fires continue to increase in number and danger, we must educate ourselves on this hazardous phenomenon. Keep reading to learn more about how such fires are caused, their impacts on global warming, and what is being done to prevent their spread!
First and Foremost: What are Zombie Fires?
The quintessential wildfire is always thought of as the type that ravages large swaths of land and forest, before eventually being defeated by powerful water hoses or rain. Enter zombie fires. Defined as wildfires that sustain throughout winter snows and spark up in the spring months, zombie fires are also known as overwintering fires. With peat, a preliminary form of coal, fueling them, overwintering fires are classified as fires that start near a fire scar from the previous year, without any lightning or human intervention. A study conducted by scientists in the Netherlands and Alaska suggests that these fires “have to burn especially hot and deep” to survive the cold winters. “The amount of rain or snow that falls appears to be inconsequential,” as the water is not able to penetrate the soil deep enough to entirely extinguish the fires.
Zombie Fires can live through extreme cold.
Their Causes
Zombie fires are witnessed to be on the rise in regions such as Alaska, Siberia, and Canada, as well as the general boreal forest biome in the Northern hemisphere. With such regions exhibiting a pattern in their environments, the aforementioned study has revealed the vulnerability of boreal peat, “which protects permafrost below and holds huge stores of sequestered carbon.” These huge stores of carbon are optimal in fueling fires, especially parallel with the nature of zombie fires to burn deep underground. Once these fires exhaust their plant fuel, they burn vertically into the peat; the more severe the fire, the deeper it burns, and the deeper it burns, the higher chance that it will “hibernate,” or sustain underground. By the time spring turns around the corner, the ice retreats, enabling the fires to flare up as they seek greater plant fuel at the edges of the original burn scar. Due to this carbon, fires can truly thrive in boreal climates, rendering it able to almost disregard the snow and low temperatures of the region.
A Connection to Global Warming
In addition, as the New York Times reports, “the Arctic is warming far faster than the rest of the planet, and warming is associated with summer temperature extremes.” Global warming and higher temperatures translate to elongated fire seasons and larger burn areas, as well as drier soil content that ignite fires. Due to these fires occurring in peat and peat-containing soils rich in carbon, their ignition and burning would emit disproportionately large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, both potent greenhouse gases. In addition, the carbon sequestered in peat has been locked away for around 10,000 years, so deep that there was no question of it impacting global warming. “It’s ancient carbon that nature cannot quickly sequester again,” reports Imperial College London engineer Guillermo Rein. And so, every second that these fires burn, net carbon emission is sent into our atmosphere, supplementing climate change even further. The cycle persists, as higher temperatures lead to longer fire seasons, which in turn lead to greater greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately, global warming at a higher scale.
Additional Dangers They Pose
As the Arctic warms more than twice as fast as the remainder of the planet, its native ice is retreating as it is replaced by shrubs, grasses, and trees. Other than destroying endemic wildlife and habitats, this vegetation presents drier and plant fuel for wildfires to burn. In addition, the peat packed inside the soil is drying out more readily due to higher temperatures, rendering it easy to ignite by lightning strikes. To sum it all up, these warmer and greener summers produce a greater number of zombie fires to attack the following spring.
Fire fighters attempt to control a blaze that’s consumed a house.
Efforts to Combat these Fires
To provide insight into the extent of zombie fires in their native areas, researchers from the Netherlands and Alaska devised a computer algorithm that draws on satellite imagery, records of lightning strikes, and human presence and infrastructure. Zombie fires tend to be relatively rare due to their novel nature, so the researchers worked off a list of 54 fires identified by firefighters thus far. As for Alaska and the nearby Northwest Territories of Canada, their algorithm resulted in an estimated 0.8% of burned area over 2 decades. Though the percentage may seem small, don’t let it fool you: a 2008 zombie fire in Alaska scorched nearly 34,000 acres, “amounting to 38 percent of the annual burned area in Alaska that year.” Though not applied in Siberia just yet, the researchers have proposed to use the new algorithm in parallel with local data and satellite imagery in northern Russia as well.
As the study not only analyzes the extent of the fires but also identifies the major ignition factors (as mentioned in earlier sections), “it gives [s] fire suppression, fire managers, a little head start to anticipate whether the next year is going to be a problem.” Now that fire suppression authorities have gained access to data that outline the likeliest places where zombie fires may occur, firefighters can anticipate where these fires will re-emerge and adequately prepare for possible outcomes. This would not only save lives and land but would also save firefighting resources and net greenhouse emissions.
Albeit “zombie” fires being an almost sensationalistic moniker to the phenomenon, Sander Veraverbeke, a landscape ecologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam agrees that the idea of “a seemingly dead thing sputtering back to life” is a truly powerful metaphor in communicating the nature of these fires. “It’s the past coming back to haunt the future,” said Merritt R. Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. Indeed, our deeds and wasteful actions regarding the use of fossil fuels are coming back to haunt us. “As climate change dries out landscapes and drives increasingly ferocious summertime blazes, these zombie fires are also likely to become more common,” declares Dr. Veraverbeke. It is crucial that we acknowledge and understand the danger of such fires, so that we may be better prepared to combat them when the time comes. The time to be environmentally conscious is now.
From all of us here at Team Gen Z, stay safe!
SOURCES:
[1] Blazes That Refuse to Die: 'Zombie Fires'. By New York Times.
[2] A Zombie-Fire Outbreak May Be Growing in Alaska and Canada. By Wired.
[3] 'Zombie' fires in the Arctic are linked to climate change. By National Geographic.
[4] Overwintering ‘zombie’ fires may become more common as climate changes. By Reuters.
