CNR and CAE together against fires in the Arctic

In the Arctic, global warming leads to changes that are quicker than anywhere else on our planet and are more than ever evident. The changes, which have occurred and are taking place, have environmental, social and economic impacts, both locally and planet-wide, due to the role of the Arctic in the global climate system. As it is usually said: “what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic". The main motivation behind Arctic PASSION is the co-creation and implementation of a coherent and integrated Arctic observation system, adapted to the different needs of the users, ranging from local inhabitants and the academic world, up to the industry and decision-makers.

The programme of the “Pan-Arctic Observing Systems - pan-AOSS” aims to overcome the known flaws in the current observation system by refining its operation, improving and extending pan-Arctic scientific and community monitoring and integration with indigenous and local knowledge, simplifying access and interoperability of Arctic data systems and services, and ensuring the economic feasibility and sustainability of the observation system for years to come.

Pan-AOSS and the services delivered by Arctic PASSION intend to answer the demand for better access to more reliable and more diversified data streams and observation services, deriving from communities, economy, governments and others, to enable them to develop policies, investments, management and social decisions based on scientific evidence and accurate information.

Arctic PASSION is a project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and that leverage a broad mix of expertise that comes from as many as 43 partners from 17 countries, including indigenous communities across the Arctic.

One of the specific themes addressed by the project is that of wildfires, which in recent years have seen a dramatic increase at high latitudes. Newspapers and television increasingly deliver us images of huge fires and clouds of smoke that cover vast regions of Asia and North America. Rising temperatures in the Arctic have resulted in droughts during the spring and summer seasons in the Arctic tundra and the surrounding northern forest. At the same time, warmer Arctic and sub-Arctic regions promote an increase in thunderstorms and lightning, the typical events that trigger fires in the Arctic. Human activities such as timber extraction and mining contribute to the impoverishment and drying up of the land.

So, global warming in the Arctic helps to increase both the fuel to be burned and the opportunities for ignition, the two main ingredients (in addition to oxygen) needed to ignite a fire. The increase in the number and intensity of the events and the increase in human activities make it necessary to monitor the risk of wildfires well in advance before they get too close to infrastructure or settlements.

This is a topic increasingly present. Just imagine that the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), engaged in monitoring wildfire emissions and the consequent spreading of smoke in the Arctic Circle, have reported fires of vast proportions in June 2024. Most of the fires are burning in the Sacha-Jacuzia Republic, which experienced extensive high-intensity fires in the summer of 2021. The set of the CAMS Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) data shows that carbon emissions from June's wildfires are already the third-highest in the past two decades, following the significant fire seasons of 2019 and 2020.

The Arctic region of the Sakha Republic experienced much higher surface air temperatures and drier than usual surface conditions for the time of year, providing the favourable environmental conditions for wildfires after ignition. CAMS scientists monitored a significant increase in the total daily radiative power of fires (FRP), indicating the intensity of fires and smoke emissions across the region.

The June's total monthly carbon emissions from fires, estimated by CAMS based on FRP observations, are the third highest in the last two decades, with 6.8 million tons of carbon, behind June 2020 and 2019, which recorded 16.3 and 13.8 million tons of carbon, respectively. To have a reference term, just imagine that the entire "Country of Italy" emits, on average, less than 30 million tons of CO2 in a month.

The increase in the number, intensity and extent of fires is not the only problem to be addressed. These critical issues end up fuelling and increasing the natural conflict that always exists in the Arctic between local populations and the services that come from the central Country or from its Regions. Indigenous peoples complain of an exclusion from land management, and the abandonment of management practices that they have always applied. On the other hand, fire emergency prevention and management services are completely absorbed by emergency management and certainly have less time and resources to dialogue with the populations. The overall result is both a lack of preventive information and education of the local populations concerning this changed scenario regarding wildfires, and then a reluctance of communities and inhabitants to accept the provisions and requests that come from services considered wrongly or rightly distant and little interested in the real needs of people. With the aim of addressing this situation, CNR and CAE are creating an integrated web-based system intended to summarise and simplify access to relevant information/products that come from different sources, making it possible to manage, integrate, select and transform these sets of information. Focusing on the local scale, INFRA offers the possibility to generate and distribute tailored messages for non-scientific end-users: individuals, communities and indigenous organizations, municipalities.

The National Research Council (CNR) has been engaged for decades, including through its specific Institute of Polar Sciences, in understanding the climate changes taking place in the Arctic and Antarctic environments and possible future developments both at the polar and global levels. In this project, the CNR brings not only the experience gained in polar activities, but also that of its Institutes with specific expertise in temperate areas such as the structure, operation and productivity of terrestrial and/or meteorological ecosystems and numerical forecasts, satellite observations and more.

CAE counts with 45 years of history in the creation of real-time observation systems of natural phenomena, with specific attention to civil protection and risk mitigation applications for communities. In this project, it brings both expertise in computer platforms, with extensive use of geo-referencing data, support to decisions and alert dissemination, and its specific experience in systems for the early detection of wildfires and their management.

The Integrated Fire Risk Management Tool (INFRA) is a service intended to address the challenges of communities, municipalities, small organisations and individuals living in the Arctic who are affected by wildfires. The INFRA service aims to improve the chain of fire information to non-professionals by providing intelligent tools to easily interpret/transform available data into customized products and messages based on users' needs, with an emphasis on local scale. The novelty of the INFRA service lies on the attention to local scale, and in having developed suitable tools to generate useful messages for the category of users to be reached.

INFRA is based on several IT modules and platforms, the most important of which are:

- INFRA-AEGIS - Web-GIS platform through which it is possible to present, combine and integrate all the information layers produced by INFRA, or collected from many other sources and services

- INFRA-SENTRY - Platform through which information and messages are distributed to users. Messages can be easily managed and tailored to specific needs and will be generated following the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard.

The service is already implemented and works without constraints on three target areas of about 1500x1500 km: Alaska-Canada, Fennoscandia, Sacha-Yakutia.

A multi-layered approach has been applied to make the service operational while all functionalities are developed or different applications/users are identified/involved.

Zero level: INFRA-AEGIS allows you to see, combine and integrate selected information layers from different sources (in particular Global Wildfire Service GWIS) to get a picture of what is happening and possible developments. Level zero is publiclyavailable.

Level one: password-protected, where dedicated experts (even local ones) can use zero-level information to generate, thanks to INFRA-SENTRY, personalized messages (textual – textual with maps/graphs etc.) and distribute them to targeted end users. Wide flexibility is possible in end-user categories and messages produced. Level 0 and level 1 are operational. Other features are being developed and implemented only in test mode. A specific implementation in the cloud computing environment was carried out for the two test areas of Alaska-Canada and Sacha.

It is an example of how Italian excellence can be useful to the world, how European funding can actually do something for the Arctic communities and facilitate the exchange of skills and knowledge between the many partners, from as many as 17 countries, of this project. Surely it is also a precious opportunity, provided by the European Union, addressed to our public and private excellence, which can improve the capacity and skills to be put at the service of our country and citizens for the reduction of the risk of wildfires. 

To learn more:

Arctic PASSION

Copernicus: Large wildfires return to the Arctic Circle in June 2024 | Copernicus



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