What is Peat?
Peat forms from the partial decay of this type of material.
What is dead plant material?
The three sides of the fire triangle are fuel, heat, and this.
What is oxygen?
Permafrost is soil that remains in this state for at least two years straight.
What is frozen?
Warmer temperatures mean this happens to Arctic snow and ice earlier each year.
What is melting?
Increasing CO₂ in the atmosphere traps more of this type of energy from the Sun.
What is heat or radiation?
Peat builds up mostly in these waterlogged, low-oxygen areas.
What are bogs or wetlands?
The main reactants in combustion are oxygen and this type of compound.
What are carbon-based (organic) compounds?
Permafrost helps protect peat by doing this.
What is blocking exposure to oxygen?
Melting white/light ice exposes darker ground, which absorbs more sunlight. This is called a change in what?
Chemistry kids - What is albedo or reflectivity?
Arctic peat fires add even more CO₂ to the atmosphere, which increases this global process, which is of great concern to environmentalists.
What is the greenhouse effect?
Peat doesn’t stay fully engulfed in flames under ice because it lacks this important ingredient for combustion.
What is oxygen?
The main products of combustion are water vapor and this.
What is carbon dioxide?
When permafrost thaws, it releases gases from decaying organic matter like methane and this gas.
What is carbon dioxide?
Fires in the Arctic are especially dangerous because they can burn this fuel underground fuel for months or years.
What is peat?
This type of feedback loop occurs when warming melts permafrost, releasing CO₂ and causing even more warming.
What is a POSITIVE feedback loop.
Over thousands of years, deeply buried peat can eventually turn into this fossil fuel.
What is coal?
Combustion is this kind of chemical reaction because it releases energy.
Chemistry kids - remember? What is exothermic?
Permafrost acts like a lid on a freezer—its melting ot loss means what for the stored carbon?
What is it is released into the atmosphere, often as carbon dioxide?
Arctic fires can continue to burn even under snow or ice because of this property of peat.
What is high carbon density and the ability to smolder?
The main human activity that increases CO₂ in the atmosphere.
What is burning fossil fuels?
Peat acts as this kind of carbon storage, helping reduce CO₂ in the atmosphere—until it burns.
What is a carbon sink?
When peat burns underground it traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere. What problem this is causing in the Arctic that helps expose peat?
What is melting permafrost.
Significant loss of permafrost can lead to this, which changes coastines and destalizes landforms.
What is erosion?
The terms "overwintering" or "holdover" describe fires that survive the winter under snow and reignite in spring. They are also called this.
What is "zombie fires."
Scientists are worried that Arctic fires could turn the tundra from a carbon sink into this.
What is a carbon (carbon dioxide) source?