Forest fires and climate change

In the first eight months of 2019, there were 16 million cases of wildfires worldwide. It also includes the fires of the Himalayan forests and the forests of Africa and the Amazon.

There is no doubt that burning forests around the world can be seen from space. US Earth Agency NASA's "Earth Observing System Data and Information System" (EOSDIS) plays a key role in bringing these events to the forefront.

Dense network of satellites registers hot spots worldwide. Spectroradiometers provide images of medium resolution. Apart from these radiometers give infrared photos also. A review of these pictures shows, which part of the earth has a very high temperature and how powerful the fire is.

The data of wildfires is tracked in real time. It is shared with environmental entities such as the Global Forest Watch Fires. The map of the Global Forest Watch Fires clearly shows how much of the world is ravaged by these fires. The map also shows that forests in many parts of the world burn badly every year, but those events do not get the importance of the media like the fire in the Amazon rainforest.

Cases of wildfires are not just in the southern hemisphere or equatorial and tropic of cancer. The bulk of the Northern Hemisphere is also scorched. Forests in Alaska and British Columbia, which were covered in snow during the winter, also experienced catastrophic fires. The forests also burned in Siberia, the coldest region of Russia. Global Forest Watch Fires has reported 1.6 crore cases of forestals across the world so far in the eight months of 2019. This is just the number of cases of fire, it does not reveal the damage.

Climate change will further increase the fire in the forests. The more the forests burn, the greater the risk of accelerating climate change. This is a vicious cycle. Forest fires will also affect the snow of the Himalayas, Rocky and Andes ranges. Rising temperatures will rapidly melt the primitive ice of the North and South Pole.