Approximately what percentage of global carbon dioxide emissions come from forrest fires??

Question

Approximately what percentage of global carbon dioxide emissions come from forrest fires??

Answer 1

For obvious reasons this percentage differs from one year to another. Quote from my link below:

"According to the Canadian figure, then, forest fires accounted for 47.47 million metric tons of carbon emissions in the United States last year. For comparison, the nation's annual carbon dioxide emissions are said to be around 6.049 billion metric tons."

http://www.slate.com/id/2175938/

So you can see it's not close to our human emissions in comparison. What's serious though is if no new trees are planted to replace the old ones.

Answer 2

Currently it's based on estimations. Most organic/biomass consist of 45-50% carbon. They then use averages of the total area and biomass burned. Interesting enough, is most fires are initiated by humans, some ecosystems are fire dependent, and Africa is noted as the fire center of the Globe. They now have a true perspective since the introduction of space monitoring technology.

This is a old site but NASA's LaRC program is undertaking such studies.

http://asd-www.larc.nasa.gov/biomass_bur...

Answer 3

less than 100%

what percentage of CO2 comes from Hillary's kankles?

Answer 4

There was a study which estimated open forest fires to contribute to 65% of Carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide (CO) is oxidized into carbon dioxide once in the atmosphere. CO also reacts photochemically to produce peroxy radicals which in turn reacts with nitrogen oxide, decreading nitric oxide available to react with the ozone. CO is also a pollutant from cars and is also found in tobacco smoke.

Hope this is of any help!

Answer 5

I don't think any really.  I mean, when forests are burned CO2 is released into the atmosphere.  But forest fires are completely natural and help the forests grow back quickly.  So the new trees that grow end up using the CO2 that was put into the atmosphere by the old trees.  However, if a forest was burned down completely and then paved over or something so it couldn't grow trees back then it would produce carbon emission.s

Answer 6

Good question, and one that really can not be answered properly,(or at least accurately).

According to my latest calculations, mankind's contribution through the use of fossil fuels, is about 1.4%.

Human respiration accounts for another 0.1%, for a total of 1.5% of total human emissions.

You would have to know the exact population of all other air breathing animals and what they produce to narrow it down further.

You would also need to know how much CO2 is being produced by the 400 or so active volcanoes on earth.

Once all of the other variables were eliminated, then you could say how much contribution forest fires make to the contribution of CO2.

Some years would be more significant than others, depending on how many large forest fires occur in any particular year.

The only scientific facts worth consideration are:

1) Humans have minimal contribution to CO2 emissions.

2) Atmospheric CO2 levels have no affect on climate changes.

3) Increased levels of CO2 always follow periods of global temperature increases and never cause temperature rises.

All we can say for certain is that nature and natural events cause increases and decreases in CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere.

Also, CO2 levels,(as minimal as they are), are required for all life to survive on our planet.

IF I were to take a 'Wild Guess' (and that is all anyone could do), it would be probably between 30% and 50%, but that has no basis on any facts that I know of.