UK Nature and Environment

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UK peatland fires are supercharging carbon emissions as climate change causes hotter, drier summers (www.cam.ac.uk)

submitted 6 months ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/nature@feddit.uk

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More fires, taking hold over more months of the year, are causing more carbon to be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Fires on peatlands, which are carbon-rich, can almost double global fire-driven carbon emissions. Researchers found that despite accounting for only a quarter of the total UK land area that burns each year, dwarfed by moor and heathland, wildfires that burn peat have caused up to 90% of annual UK fire-driven carbon emissions since 2001 – with emissions spikes in particularly dry years.

Peat only burns when it’s hot and dry enough - conditions that are occurring more often with climate change. The peatlands of Saddleworth Moor in the Peak District, and Flow Country in northern Scotland, have both been affected by huge wildfires in recent years.

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