Don't Burn the Crops Want a quick recipe for reducing Arctic ice
melt fast? Stop burning northern hemisphere farmlands and
pasturelands. New research finds that large-scale agricultural
burning in Russia, Kazakhstan, China, the US, Canada, and the
Ukraine is melting Arctic ice. The big contributor: Spring
burning, when farmers torch crop residues and brush to clear new
land for crops and livestock. The black carbon soot produced by
these fires flows north, warms the surrounding air, and absorbs
solar energy when it falls on ice and snow. How bad is the
problem? Springtime burning may account for 30 percent of Arctic
warming to date. The good news is there's an easy fix. Targeting
these burns gets us a genuinely fast reduction in temperature
over the Arctic. Plus we know how to control these pollutants
right now. Just stop burning. Right now. Before the melting ice
rewires the oceanic currents delivering us the climate we're
used to. The research is part of POLARCAT, an international
effort to track the transp