Inside the quest to combat Arctic fires and save the planet’s frozen carbon

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In the middle of an especially warm July in 2021, a wildfire ignited in a thick forest of black spruce and peeling paper birch trees on the northern campus of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The blaze, possibly sparked by lightning, burned across the dry carpet of feather mosses and lichen before climbing into the crowns.

2021年7月，正值异常炎热的时期，阿拉斯加大学费尔班克斯分校北校区的一片茂密黑云杉和纸桦林中燃起了一场野火。这场火灾可能是由闪电引发的，火势蔓延过干燥的羽藓和地衣地毯，随后向上蔓延至树冠。

By the time fire agencies responded, flames had reached 12 feet in length and sent up a 500-foot column of smoke. A few days shy of the five-year anniversary of the Yankovich Road Fire, I followed three members of the Alaska Fire Science Consortium into the boreal forest, walking along cross-country ski trails lined by feathery field horsetail.

当消防部门赶到时，火焰已达12英尺高，并升起了500英尺高的烟柱。在扬科维奇路（Yankovich Road）火灾五周年纪念日前几天，我跟随阿拉斯加火灾科学联盟的三名成员进入了北方森林，沿着两侧长满羽状问荆的越野滑雪道前行。

In 2024, the organization, which hosts presentations to keep wildfire managers abreast of new developments in fire science, helped turn the area into an educational walking trail, with interpretive signs posted along the route. About a half-mile in, the horizon opened up as we reached a sparse stand of naked, blackened tree trunks, stripped of needles and neighbors.

2024年，该组织通过举办讲座让野火管理者了解火灾科学的最新进展，并协助将该区域改造成了一条教育步道，沿途设有解说牌。在大约半英里处，视野变得开阔，我们到达了一片稀疏的、光秃秃的黑色树干区，这些树木失去了针叶，周围也空无一物。

Hilary Shook, the coordinator of the consortium, stepped off the trail with her thaw probe, a T-shaped pointed metal rod used to detect the upper boundary of the permafrost, the ancient layer of frozen soil that underlies 15% of the land around the Northern Hemisphere and stores roughly twice as much carbon as the atmosphere.

该联盟的协调员希拉里·舒克（Hilary Shook）带着她的解冻探测器走下步道。这是一种T形的尖头金属杆，用于探测永久冻土的上界。永久冻土是覆盖北半球15%陆地的古老冻土层，其储存的碳量约为大气中碳含量的两倍。

A test of the ground just outside the burn scar hit the concrete-like layer about a foot below the surface. But as Shook applied pressure here, where the fire had burned away the moss and organic-rich topsoil that insulates the permafrost, the probe plunged at least three times deeper into the ground.

在烧毁痕迹之外的地面测试中，探测器在地下约一英尺处触碰到了混凝土般的冻土层。但在火灾烧毁了为永久冻土提供隔热保护的苔藓和富含有机质的表层土壤的地方，舒克施加压力后，探测器深入地下的深度至少是前者的三倍。

“That was an immediate effect of the fire,” said Alison York, the outgoing coordinator of the organization, who was standing nearby. “When we monitored right after, it had already thawed quite a bit.”

“这是火灾的直接影响，”站在附近的该组织即将离任的协调员艾莉森·约克（Alison York）说，“当我们火灾后立即监测时，它已经融化了不少。”

This rudimentary tool, offering a measure of depth from a single point in the earth, reveals an escalating problem across the far north. As climate change fuels increasingly frequent and severe fires in the planet’s northern latitudes, they’re accelerating the thawing of more and more permafrost.

这种原始工具通过测量地球上单点的深度，揭示了整个远北地区日益严重的问题。随着气候变化助长了地球北纬地区日益频繁和严重的火灾，这些火灾正在加速永久冻土的融化。

This allows the organic matter to break down and release powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to a spiraling climate feedback effect, propelling more warming, more fires, and the loss of still more permafrost. Most dramatically, intensifying wildfires in Canada released more carbon than the nation’s combined fossil fuel emissions in 2023.

这使得有机物质分解并释放出强效温室气体，从而引发螺旋式的气候反馈效应，导致进一步变暖、更多火灾以及更多永久冻土的流失。最引人注目的是，2023年加拿大加剧的野火所释放的碳量超过了该国化石燃料排放的总和。

As in Alaska, many of these megafires occur in vast remote areas where the policy is to let them burn so long as they don’t threaten human habitats. Yet if intensifying fires and warming are left unchecked, the world’s boreal forests and permafrost could increasingly transition from giant carbon sinks into massive sources of atmospheric carbon.

与阿拉斯加一样，许多此类特大火灾发生在广阔的偏远地区，那里的政策是只要不威胁人类居住区就任其燃烧。然而，如果任由火灾加剧和气候变暖发展，全球的北方森林和永久冻土可能会越来越多地从巨大的碳汇转变为大气碳的巨大来源。

Now, international teams of researchers across the US, Canada, and elsewhere are scrambling to understand what’s at stake, financially as well as ecologically. They’re looking at preventive measures, like controlled burns, and studying the potential to rapidly detect and extinguish wildfires before they grow out of control.

目前，美国、加拿大及其他地区的国际研究团队正争分夺秒地评估其在经济和生态方面的影响。他们正在研究预防措施，如计划烧除，并探索在野火失控前迅速发现并扑灭它们的可能性。

They’re even exploring what was once unthinkable: sending in human firefighters not to save lives or structures, but to protect one of our planet’s great stores of carbon. “We need to figure out a better way to live with wildfire,” says Brendan Rogers, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, one of the main organizations driving the loosely collaborative research effort. “I do think that it can make a meaningful difference.”

他们甚至在探索曾经不可想象的事情：派遣消防员进入火场，不是为了拯救生命或建筑物，而是为了保护地球上巨大的碳储量之一。“我们需要找到一种与野火共存的更好方式，”伍德威尔气候研究中心（Woodwell Climate Research Center）的高级科学家布伦丹·罗杰斯（Brendan Rogers）说，该中心是推动这项松散合作研究的主要组织之一。“我确实认为这能产生有意义的影响。”

Woodwell, the University of Victoria’s Polis Institute for Ecological Governance, and the nonprofit Alaska Venture Fund are now partnering on a multimillion-dollar initiative known as North Fire to study and raise public awareness about the potential benefits of these interventions, MIT Technology Review can report.

据《麻省理工科技评论》报道，伍德威尔气候研究中心、维多利亚大学波利斯生态治理研究所（Polis Institute for Ecological Governance）以及非营利组织阿拉斯加风险基金（Alaska Venture Fund）目前正合作开展一项名为“北火”（North Fire）的数百万美元计划，旨在研究并提高公众对这些干预措施潜在益处的认识。

The idea is complicated and controversial for a number of reasons. Wildfire is a natural and necessary component of healthy forest ecosystems. Preventing or suppressing fires across huge stretches of largely unmanaged Arctic-boreal forests and tundra would take vast resources. And it’s not yet clear how much of a difference such interventions would make in emissions.

这一想法因多种原因而复杂且充满争议。野火是健康森林生态系统自然且必要的组成部分。在广袤且基本无人管理的北极-北方森林和苔原地区预防或扑灭火灾需要巨大的资源。此外，目前尚不清楚此类干预措施能在多大程度上减少排放。

Ultimately, the mere fact that researchers are considering such extreme interventions into natural systems is a grim reflection of the dangers we’ve placed ourselves in by continuing to generate more and more greenhouse-gas emissions each year. Those threats are forcing us to grapple with increasingly difficult questions that involve ever steeper trade-offs: What’s the best way to spend our finite resources and dwindling time to avoid the worst dangers of climate change?

归根结底，研究人员考虑对自然系统进行如此极端的干预，这一事实本身就严峻地反映了我们因每年持续产生越来越多的温室气体排放而陷入的危险境地。这些威胁迫使我们去应对日益困难的问题，这些问题涉及越来越严峻的权衡：为了避免气候变化带来的最严重危险，我们该如何最好地利用有限的资源和日益减少的时间？

And when, if ever, is it okay to put people in possible danger to reduce broader risks to the world? ‘A massive blind spot’ Emissions from forest fires have risen 60% around the world since 2001—but they’ve nearly tripled across the boreal forests in the far north.

在什么情况下（如果有的话），为了降低全球更广泛的风险而让人们处于可能的危险之中是可以接受的？“巨大的盲点”：自2001年以来，全球森林火灾排放量上升了60%，但在远北地区的北方森林中，这一数字几乎翻了三倍。

This stretch of the globe is warming as much as four times faster than the rest of the planet, drying out the landscape. In addition, lightning strikes that set off fires have ticked up sharply as warmer air increases the convective energy in the atmosphere, driving the updrafts that trigger thunderstorms.

地球的这一区域变暖速度比全球其他地区快四倍，导致地表干涸。此外，随着空气变暖增加了大气中的对流能量，驱动了引发雷暴的上升气流，导致引发火灾的闪电次数急剧增加。

In that sense, humans have already interceded in these otherwise natural ecosystems by producing the greenhouse-gas emissions that are increasing temperatures, subjecting forests to fire patterns well outside healthy historic norms. “To me, that outweighs the existential dread of ‘Should w

从这个意义上说，人类通过产生导致气温升高的温室气体排放，已经干预了这些原本自然的生态系统，使森林遭受了远超健康历史常态的火灾模式。“对我来说，这比‘我们是否应该’这种存在主义的恐惧更重要。”