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Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests

The Siberian larch forests, taking up about a fifth of the global boreal biome, are different from the North American boreal forests in that they generally do not undergo a secondary succession. While wildfires in the boreal forests in North America have been shown to exert a cooling effect on the c...

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Autores principales: Chen, Dong, Loboda, Tatiana V., He, Tao, Zhang, Yi, Liang, Shunlin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29555985
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23253-1
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author Chen, Dong
Loboda, Tatiana V.
He, Tao
Zhang, Yi
Liang, Shunlin
author_facet Chen, Dong
Loboda, Tatiana V.
He, Tao
Zhang, Yi
Liang, Shunlin
author_sort Chen, Dong
collection PubMed
description The Siberian larch forests, taking up about a fifth of the global boreal biome, are different from the North American boreal forests in that they generally do not undergo a secondary succession. While wildfires in the boreal forests in North America have been shown to exert a cooling effect on the climate system through a sharp increase in surface albedo associated with canopy removal and species composition change during succession, the magnitude of the surface forcing resulting from fire-induced albedo change and its longevity in Siberia have not been previously quantified. Here we show that in contrast to previous expectations, stand-replacing fires exert a strong cooling effect similar in magnitude to that in North America. This cooling effect is attributable to the increase in surface albedo during snow-on periods. However, the observed earlier snowmelt in the region, and subsequently a longer snow-free season, has resulted in a warming effect which has the potential to offset the fire-induced cooling. The net albedo-induced forcing of the Siberian larch forests in the future would hinge on the interaction between the fire-induced cooling effect and the climate-induced warming effect, both of which will be impacted by the expected further warming in the region.
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spelling pubmed-58591742018-03-20 Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests Chen, Dong Loboda, Tatiana V. He, Tao Zhang, Yi Liang, Shunlin Sci Rep Article The Siberian larch forests, taking up about a fifth of the global boreal biome, are different from the North American boreal forests in that they generally do not undergo a secondary succession. While wildfires in the boreal forests in North America have been shown to exert a cooling effect on the climate system through a sharp increase in surface albedo associated with canopy removal and species composition change during succession, the magnitude of the surface forcing resulting from fire-induced albedo change and its longevity in Siberia have not been previously quantified. Here we show that in contrast to previous expectations, stand-replacing fires exert a strong cooling effect similar in magnitude to that in North America. This cooling effect is attributable to the increase in surface albedo during snow-on periods. However, the observed earlier snowmelt in the region, and subsequently a longer snow-free season, has resulted in a warming effect which has the potential to offset the fire-induced cooling. The net albedo-induced forcing of the Siberian larch forests in the future would hinge on the interaction between the fire-induced cooling effect and the climate-induced warming effect, both of which will be impacted by the expected further warming in the region. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-03-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5859174/ /pubmed/29555985 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23253-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Chen, Dong
Loboda, Tatiana V.
He, Tao
Zhang, Yi
Liang, Shunlin
Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests
title Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests
title_full Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests
title_fullStr Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests
title_full_unstemmed Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests
title_short Strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in Siberian larch forests
title_sort strong cooling induced by stand-replacing fires through albedo in siberian larch forests
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29555985
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23253-1
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