Tracing devastating fires in Portugal to a snow archive in the Swiss Alps: a case study

A single, intense wildfire event in Portugal in 2017 deposited an exceptional amount of microscopic charcoal particles in the snowpack of the Swiss Alps, equivalent to what would typically accumulate over a year in ice cores. This finding demonstrates that high-alpine snow and ice archives are highly sensitive to distant fire events, unlike sedimentary archives which primarily record local fires. Researchers analyzed black carbon (BC) and microscopic charcoal in snow near the Jungfraujoch research station, combined with backward trajectory modeling and remote sensing data, to link the observed BC peak on June 22-25, 2017, to the Portuguese wildfires. The study highlights the potential of ice cores as archives for long-distance fire events and estimates that this single event emitted at least 203.5 tons of black carbon.

Osmont, D., Brugger, S., Gilgen, A., Weber, H., Sigl, M., Modini, R. L., Schwörer, C., Tinner, W., Wunderle, S., & Schwikowski, M. (2020). Tracing devastating fires in Portugal to a snow archive in the Swiss Alps: a case study. The Cryosphere, 14(11), 3731–3745. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3731-2020