Friday April 24, 2009 Fires make climate change worse - report
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - In a vicious cycle made worse by humans, scientists
now believe fires spur climate change, which in turn makes
blazes bigger, more frequent and more damaging to the
environment. Climate experts have known that a warmer world
would spawn more fires, but in research published on Thursday in
the journal Science, scientists reported that fires --
especially those set by humans to clear forests -- influence
climate change. Smoke particles sent into the atmosphere by
fires inhibit rainfall, which makes the land drier and
encourages more fires to start, said study co-author Jennifer
Balch of the University of Santa Barbara in California. On a
global scale, burning releases vast amounts of heat-trapping
greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, making fires more likely
in a warming world, Balch said in a video news briefing. The
report's authors estimate that greenhouse emissions from the