1 00:00:01,390 --> 00:00:06,390 [Music] Narrator: On July 7th, 2019 the skies around Anchorage Alaska were thick with smoke. 2 00:00:06,390 --> 00:00:10,000 Across the Cook Inlet, 3 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:12,000 the Swan Lake Fire had spread over nearly 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:16,000 79,000 acres and was still growing. 5 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:19,000 This was just one of over 400 fires that 6 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:22,000 burned in Alaska so far in 2019. 7 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:26,000 In the Arctic, fires can help rejuvenate 8 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:33,000 ecosystems and make way for new growth. 9 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:35,000 However, Arctic and boreal regions 10 00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:38,000 are warming at a faster rate than anywhere else 11 00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:40,000 on Earth, and hotter and drier summers are leading 12 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:44,000 to accelerated fire cycles and more intense burns. 13 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,000 Elizabeth Hoy: Fires in boreal forests are different 14 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,000 than in other areas of the world, such as those in the western United States. 15 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:54,000 One of the main differences is they have these really thick 16 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:57,000 organic soils layers and these soil layers burn. 17 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:01,000 And so you’re not just getting fires in the trees or in the canopy, 18 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:04,000 you’re getting fires below the tree itself, like in that soil layer and 19 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:08,000 that is really when you get a lot of these carbon emissions. 20 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:11,000 Narrator: Wildfires release large amounts of particulate matter 21 00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:15,000 which is transported across and beyond the region following 22 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:18,000 wind patterns. This means that a fire burning in the Arctic 23 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:22,000 can impact people living thousands of miles away. 24 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:26,000 Elizabeth Hoy: Because there are these thick stores of organic material 25 00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:29,000 in the soil, when they burn, they are 26 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:33,000 releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, which is then causing 27 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:36,000 more warming. And that warming isn’t just going to happen in the 28 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:40,000 Arctic, we’re going to see climate change happen throughout all of the world. 29 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:43,000 Narrator: NASA is studying how a changing climate is 30 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:47,000 contributing to more frequent and powerful Arctic fires, 31 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:50,000 and what that means for ecosystems and our health. 32 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:53,000 Elizabeth Hoy: ABoVE is the Arctic - Boreal Vulnerability Experiment. And 33 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:57,000 it is a large-scale field campaign that NASA has 34 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:01,000 designed to study many aspects of the ecosystem 35 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:04,000 of the Arctic and boreal regions in Alaska and western Canada. 36 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:07,000 In addition to field observations, NASA satellites 37 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:11,000 give researchers the ability to track large-scale 38 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:13,000 changes to the Arctic over a period of time. 39 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:18,000 And it’s not uncommon for these Earth-observing satellites to be the first to detect wildfire, 40 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:23,000 especially in the remote Arctic regions. 41 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:25,000 Elizabeth Hoy: NASA does a really good job of putting 42 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:30,000 all these different pieces together. That’s the benefit of having a large agency like NASA 43 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:32,000 do this type of study. 44 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:35,000 Narrator: On the ground and in the air, NASA is working to better understand 45 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:38,000 the consequences of Arctic fires 46 00:02:38,000 --> 00:02:52,255 in one of the most rapidly changing regions on Earth.