Researchers find that 'brown carbon' from wildfire smoke is helping to melt Arctic snow and ice.
Image caption,However, the same can't be said for brown carbon - which principally comes from the burning of trees and vegetation but is also created, to a lesser degree, from fossil fuels. The warming effect of this less dense substance has been either ignored or estimated with huge uncertainty in climate models.
While some previous estimates had shown brown carbon was responsible for just 3% of the warming effect compared to black carbon, the scientists found that it is doing far more damage in the region. The study found that wildfires were the main source of this brown material - contributing twice as much to the warming effect of brown carbon in the Arctic than was coming from fossil fuels.
But as wildfires in mid and northern latitudes have increased as the world warms, this new study finds that brown carbon from this source is having an increasing impact in the Arctic.
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