Russia's Peatland Fires Seen Burning For Months

Alister Doyle PlanetArk 12 Aug 10;

Some of Russia's smog-causing peatland fires are likely to burn for months, part of a global problem of drained marshes that emit climate-warming greenhouse gases, experts said on Wednesday.

Novel carbon markets could offer a long-term fix for peat bogs, from Indonesia to South Africa, if negotiators of a U.N. climate treaty can agree ways to pay to safeguard marshes that are often drained to make way for farms, roads or homes.

"Peat fires continue underground and...they will not be extinguished in Russia before winter rains and snow set in," said Hans Joosten, professor of peatland studies and paleoecology at the University of Greifswald in Germany.

To put out fires "you must inundate the area completely," he said, adding that one peat fire in South Africa near the border with Botswana, for instance, had smoldered for 5 years. Peat is formed from partly decayed vegetation.

Environmental group Wetlands International estimated 80 to 90 percent of the smog in Moscow was from peatland fires near the capital, rather than forest fires linked to what weather officials call Russia's hottest summer in a millennium.

"In Russia, peat fires can sometimes last under snow cover through the winter," said Ilkka Vanha-Majamaa, a scientist at the Finnish Forestry Research Institute.

Water dumped from planes, part of Russia's response, is rarely enough to halt peat fires, said Alex Kaat, spokesman for Wetlands International. Moscow has pledged more action to extinguish the blazes.

"Russia promised the same after peat fires in 2002 and nothing was done," Kaat said, saying past efforts to use water from the Volga River to soak peatlands had been half-hearted.

"CATASTROPHIC FIRES" WARNING

Russia has the largest national carbon emissions from peatland destruction after Indonesia, according to Wetlands International.

And the U.N. panel of climate experts warned Moscow of problems of global warming and peat in its last report in 2007.

"During dry years, catastrophic fires are expected on drained peatlands in European Russia," it said, calling for a restoration of water supplies to reverse drainage.

Peat releases carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as it dries out. Peat is also often cut and used as a low-grade fuel.

Joosten, who is also secretary general of the International Mire Conservation Group, said there were 500,000 sq km (193,100 sq miles) of drained peatlands in the world -- the size of Spain. "To my mind that is 500,000 sq km too much," he said.

Wetlands International estimates that drained peatlands account for 6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from human sources. The U.N. climate panel says global warming stokes desertification, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels.

Joosten said current projects for re-wetting peatlands in Belarus and Ukraine were attracting interest from investors in voluntary carbon dioxide markets. But such credits were worth only a few euros per tonne of avoided emissions.

A problem is in agreeing how much a peat bog emits.

A hectare (2.47 acres) of drained peatland in central Europe, used for agriculture, probably emits about 25 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from continuing decay, Joosten said.

But natural peat marshes emit methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, so protecting peat does not eliminate emissions. Joosten estimated an intact hectare of wet peat emits the equivalent of 10-15 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

Russia's Fires Cause "Brown Cloud," May Hit Arctic
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 12 Aug 10;

Smoke from forest fires smothering Moscow adds to health problems of "brown clouds" from Asia to the Amazon and Russian soot may stoke global warming by hastening a thaw of Arctic ice, environmental experts say.

"Health effects of such clouds are huge," said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, chair of a U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) study of "brown clouds" blamed for dimming sunlight in cities such as Beijing or New Delhi and hitting crop growth in Asia.

The clouds -- a haze of pollution from cars or coal-fired power plants, forest fires and wood and other materials burned for cooking and heating -- are near-permanent and blamed for causing chronic respiratory and heart diseases.

"In Asia just the indoor smoke -- because people cook with firewood -- causes over a million deaths a year," Ramanathan, of the University of California, San Diego, told Reuters.

Moscow's top health official said on Monday that about 700 people were dying every day, twice as many as in normal weather, as Russia grapples with its worst heat wave in 130 years.

"The Russian fires are in principle similar to what you see from other brown clouds," said Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, a vice-chair of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud study. "The difference is that this only lasts a few weeks."

Asian pollution has been blamed for dusting Himalayan glaciers with black soot that absorbs more heat than reflective snow and ice and so speeds a thaw. Worldwide, however, the polluting haze blocks out sunlight and so slows climate change.

For the climate, "the main concern ... is what impact the Russian smoke would have on the Arctic, in terms of black carbon and other (particles) in the smoke settling on the sea ice," Ramanathan said.

ARCTIC ICE

In past years "we have had episodes of biomass burning that have brought clouds in over the Arctic," said Kim Holmen, director of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Holmen, who runs a pollution monitoring station in Svalbard in the high Arctic, said the air over Russia was fairly stable in recent days, concentrating smoke over land. But a shift in winds, easing pollution in Moscow, could sweep smog northwards.

Arctic sea ice, which shrinks in mid-September to an annual minimum before the winter freeze, now covers a slightly bigger area than in 2007 and 2008, the smallest extents since satellite measurements began in the 1970s.

The exposure of Arctic Ocean water to sunlight is a threat to the livelihoods of Arctic peoples and creatures such as polar bears. It also accelerates global warming, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate experts on mankind's use of fossil fuels.

"Such conditions are likely to become more common in the future," Rodhe said of the Russian heatwave and related fires.

Asia is most studied for brown clouds but they also form over parts of North America, Europe, the Amazon basin and southern Africa. Burning of savannah in sub-Saharan Africa, to clear land for crops, is a new source.

Forest and peat bog fires are burning over 1,740 sq kms (672 sq mile), the Russian Emergencies Ministry said. By contrast, official Brazilian data show the Amazon rainforest lost 1,810 sq kms in almost a year to June 2010.

Holmen also echoed Russian authorities' worries that the fires may also release radioactive elements locked in vegetation since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.

Radioactive isotopes include strontium 90 and caesium 137. Other industrial pollutants such as PCBs could also be freed.

(Editing by Paul Taylor)

Russia Says Fires Burn Chernobyl-Tainted Forests
Alexei Anishchuk PlanetArk 12 Aug 10;

Fires have scorched forests contaminated with radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a Russian forestry official said on Wednesday, but it was unclear how dangerous the smoke might be.

Kremlin leaders are already grappling with Russia's deadliest wildfires since 1972 and a drought that has destroyed crops after what weather monitoring officials say was the country's hottest summer in a millennium.

Fears of stirring up nuclear pollution from the Chernobyl disaster could take the crisis to a new level, though officials said radiation levels were normal in Moscow and once scientist said the level of risk depended on exactly where the fires were.

"Yes, there have been fires," Vasily Tuzov, deputy director of Russia's forest protection agency, told Reuters by telephone when asked if there had been fires in forests polluted by the Chernobyl accident, the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.

"Most of them have been extinguished now," Tuzov said.

He refused to give more details about the fires, referring to a statement on the agency's website which said that fires covering an area of 39 square kilometers (15 square miles) had been registered in regions with forests polluted with radiation.

The regions affected included Bryansk province, which borders Ukraine southwest of Moscow and was polluted by radioactive dust that billowed across Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Europe after a series of explosions at Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986.

Russian Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said on August 5 that in the event of a fire in forests in the Bryansk region, radioactive particles could be propelled into the air.

Kim Holmen, head of research at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said trees, other vegetation and the ground had absorbed some of the nuclear material spewed out in the 1986 accident and blazes were releasing some again into the air.

"The sins of our fathers revisit us," he told Reuters.

"There is a remobilization of Chernobyl material. That is a side of biomass burning that is under-communicated. There is plenty of this still around ... In order to say anything useful about the amounts you have to see where the fires are."

Greenpeace Russia said in a statement that three fires had been registered in badly contaminated forests in the Bryansk region, which was polluted with the nuclear isotope caesium 137.

Radiation levels in the Moscow region were unchanged and within normal limits on Thursday, said on Yelena Popova, the head of Moscow's radiation monitoring center.

Asked whether fires in the areas contaminated by Chernobyl could bring radioactive particles in the Moscow region, she said the risk was still "theoretical."

"There is a possibility that winds could bring contaminated air from Kaluga or Tula regions if major fires erupt there," she said, referring to two Russian provinces a little under 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Moscow that were also polluted by Chernobyl.

"But our monitoring stations have not registered any increase in such activity so far," she said.

MOSCOW SMOKE CLEARS

The wildfires have killed at least 54 people in Russia.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she had called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday to express solidarity with Russia over the crisis.

Strong winds cleared the toxic smoke that has choked Moscow for three weeks on Wednesday, but weather forecasters warned it could return in 24 hours.

The heat and smoke in Moscow -- which sent pollution levels to the highest levels in decades -- almost doubled mortality rates in the capital and disrupted flights, consumer activity and even trading in Russian stocks and bonds.

Muscovites got a glimpse of clear skies on Wednesday after a thunderstorm accompanied by strong winds in the early hours dispersed the smoke. Some young Russians rejoiced in the rains, dancing in the downpour and cheering the thunder and lightning.

The Emergencies Ministry said the area of burning forests in Russia had almost halved in the past 24 hours to 927 square km (358 square miles) from 1,740 square km (676 square miles), and that nearly 166,000 people were fighting more than 600 fires.

"As soon as there is windless weather again, the smoke will return," Roman Vilfand, the director of the state weather forecasting center, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

"It has got easier in Moscow but not where the fires are burning."

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)