A fire in California on September 18.

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Ringo HW Chiu / AP / SIPA

The United States or the regions of the Arctic Circle experienced "unprecedented" forest fires in 2020, but the downward trend in emissions from these fires continued globally, the European Copernicus service on climate change said on Monday .

"Areas such as the Arctic Circle and the western United States have experienced fires of unprecedented intensity and causing emissions," writes the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) in an assessment by fire satellite carried out between January 1 and December 7, 2020.

"A devastating year in the areas most affected by the fires"

"While 2020 has undoubtedly been a devastating year in the areas most affected by fires, global emissions (due to fires) have been lower due to better fire management and mitigation measures," a press release the scientific director of CAMS, Mark Parrington.

But this overall decline, which has continued since the start in 2003 of monitoring by Copernicus, should not lead to "complacency, as the fires in the most affected regions have been at record intensity due to warmer and drier conditions. He continues.

"More and more pollutants transported over thousands of kilometers"

As a result, "more and more pollutants have been transported over thousands of kilometers, affecting the quality of the air for millions of people," said the scientist.

In September, Copernicus had noted that smoke from the fires ravaging the western United States had reached Europe, 8,000 kilometers away.

“In several American states, starting from California and Colorado, then extending to Oregon, Washington State, Utah, Montana and Idaho, the data shows activity in the tens to hundreds of times more intense than the national averages for 2003-2019 ”, underlines Copernicus.

In the Arctic, as early as September, CAMS "was able to confirm that summer fires had set new emission records, with smoke plumes equivalent to more than a third of Canada's surface".

Australia also experienced a very intense fire season, which released fumes covering 20 million km2, roughly the combined area of ​​Russia and a third of Europe.

Overall better since 2003

The highly publicized “mega-fires” episodes are more and more numerous, in particular favored by rising temperatures and droughts which are increasing according to scientists under the effect of global warming.

Others are caused in particular by deforestation operations, as in the Amazon.

But overall, since 2003 and the start of its surveys, Copernicus has recorded a drop in carbon emissions due to these fires, from more than 2,000 megatons to 1,690 in 2020, after 1,870 megatons in 2019.

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