This year, wildfires have produced twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as the whole of Germany does in a year. Some affected areas have even broken CO2 production records. This emerges from a study by Copernicus, a European program for monitoring the Earth.
Greenhouse gas production broke records in some areas of Siberia, mainly in the Sakha Republic of Russia, but also came from wildfires in Turkey, Tunisia and the United States.
According to the Copernicus program, this year’s forest fires together produced 1.7 billion tons of greenhouse gases. This is equivalent to about 6.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which is approximately 2.5 times more than the entire EU produced from fossil fuels in 2020.
As scientists state, it is constantly more likely that the amount of greenhouse gases released by forest fires will increase due to the effects of climate change. In addition, air quality has worsened in many places since this summer as large amounts of microparticles have been released.
The worst situation this year was mainly in California, where residents experienced its most devastating wildfire in history, called the Dixie Fire.
