Extracting a History of Global Fire Emissions for the Past Millennium From Ice Core Records of Acetylene, Ethane, and Methane

Biomass burning is an important component of the Earth system in terms of global biogeochemistry, atmospheric composition, climate, terrestrial ecology, and land use. This study examines published ice core trace gas measurements of acetylene, ethane, and methane, which have been used as proxies for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Main Authors: Nicewonger, Melinda R, Aydin, Murat, Prather, Michael J, Saltzman, Eric S
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: eScholarship, University of California 2020
Subjects:
Climate Action
biomass burning
ethane
methane
acetylene
paleofire
ice core
Atmospheric Sciences
Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience
Online Access:https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0gs3c3cm
https://escholarship.org/content/qt0gs3c3cm/qt0gs3c3cm.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020jd032932
Description
Summary:Biomass burning is an important component of the Earth system in terms of global biogeochemistry, atmospheric composition, climate, terrestrial ecology, and land use. This study examines published ice core trace gas measurements of acetylene, ethane, and methane, which have been used as proxies for paleofire emissions. We investigate the consistency of these records for the past 1,000years in terms of (1) temporal trends in global fire emissions and (2) quantitative estimates for changes in global burning (dry matter burned per year). Three-dimensional transport and box models were used to construct emissions scenarios for the trace gases consistent with each ice core record. Burning histories were inferred from trace gas emissions by accounting for biome-specific emission factors for each trace gas. The temporal trends in fire inferred from the trace gases are in reasonable agreement, with a large decline in biomass burning emissions from the Medieval Period (MP: 1000–1500CE) to the Little Ice Age (LIA: 1650–1750CE). However, the three trace gas ice core records do not yield a consistent fire history, even assuming dramatic (and unrealistic) changes in the spatial distribution of fire and biomes. Substantial changes in other factors such as meteorological transport or atmospheric photochemical lifetimes appear to be required to reconcile the trace gas records.

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