SNF Advanced Grant (ERC AdG replacement scheme)
Principal investigator: Prof. Hubertus Fischer, Climate and Environmental Physics
The wildfires of recent summers point to a close connection between human-induced climate warming and fire activity. However, there are also many other human influences on wildfires, such as the type of vegetation, the suppression or promotion of fires by humans, and the intentional or accidental ignition of fires. The natural response of fire activity to climate change is therefore very difficult to infer from present-day observations.
The goal of BURNice is to investigate the natural response of fires to both rapid and gradual climate changes during periods when human influence was minimal — for example, at the beginning of the Holocene, during the previous interglacial around 125,000 years ago, or during the last glacial period. To achieve this, BURNice uses the new fire tracer ethane, found in air bubbles trapped in polar ice cores, which allows for a quantitative reconstruction of ethane emissions from wildfires. From these emissions, the total amount of biomass burned globally can be estimated. In BURNice, we are developing new analytical methods that enable precise measurements of ethane in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. These methods are applied to different climatic phases and rapid climate events of the past 130,000 years. The interpretation of the data relies on computer model simulations of the transport and chemical degradation of ethane in Earth’s past atmosphere.
