where there’s fire there’s smoke
Monday, December 31st, 2012…
Wildfire, increasing with climate change [1, 2, 3], deposits increasing amounts of light-absorbing black carbon [soot] on the cryosphere [snow and ice], multiplying the existing heat-driven ice-reflectivity feedback [a.k.a. albedo feedback].
Sifting through data from NASA’s Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) revealed smoke clouds near, over, and even in contact with Greenland.
The discovery was reported widely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 .
Myself and intern Nathaniel Henry find other similar cases in the CALIPSO data, most are less obvious because the smoke disperses into the atmosphere from its source. In the above case, the source fire was active in nearby Labrador for several days.
Stay tuned to meltfactor.org as this story evolves and as we attempt the first-of-a-kind crowdfunded Greenland expedition via http://darksnowproject.org/