FOREST fires spew out just as much carbon monoxide as factories and cars.
Gerhard Wotawa and his team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration in Colorado checked background CO levels from 40 sites across
North America and Europe throughout the 1990s. They found that summer peaks in
CO were strongly related to fires raging in the boreal forests of northern
Canada and Russia. While the fires didn鈥檛 happen every year, on average they
chucked out much more gas than anyone realised鈥攁s much as human activity
made throughout all of the US and Europe (Geophysical Research Letters,
vol 28, p 4575).
Global warming might make the problem worse, say the researchers, as rising
temperatures could trigger more forest fires.