Delayed formation of Arctic snow cover in response to wildland fires in a warming climate

Yamin Qing, Shuo Wang (), Amir AghaKouchak and Pierre Gentine
Additional contact information
Yamin Qing: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Shuo Wang: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Amir AghaKouchak: University of California
Pierre Gentine: Columbia University

Nature Climate Change, 2025, vol. 15, issue 10, 1091-1098

Abstract: Abstract Wildland fires in seasonally snow-covered areas can have lasting effects on both the snowpack and carbon stocks. Here, using long-term satellite data, we show that from 1982 to 2018, the burned area in the Arctic has significantly increased, while the duration of snow cover has significantly decreased. An XGBoost machine learning model and causal analysis confirmed the role of wildland fires in delaying snow cover formation, with this effect strongly linked to fire-induced reductions in albedo and increases in temperature. In addition, we observed a delay of more than 5 days in snow cover formation following major wildland fires. Looking ahead, our projections under a high-emissions scenario (Shared Socioeconomic Pathway, SSP 5-8.5) indicate that the burned area could increase by a factor of 2.6 and the annual mean snow cover duration could decrease by nearly 18 days between 2015 and 2100 compared with the historical average.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02443-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:15:y:2025:i:10:d:10.1038_s41558-025-02443-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-025-02443-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().