Wildfires above the Arctic Circle in Greenland and Alaska

Alaska Garnet Creek Fire
The Garnet Creek Fire (#576) as seen from the air on Monday, July 15, 2019, was burning about 12 miles southwest of Rampart, Alaska. The fire was started by lightning. Alaska Fire Service.

Alaska

Wildfire activity is moving north. Of the 26 new fires reported over the past two days in Alaska, ten were above the Arctic Circle. Isolated thunderstorms are expected in the central and eastern interior today, Tuesday, with high temperatures reaching the low 80s in the Yukon Flats area.

Fifteen new fires were reported across Alaska Monday. Twenty-three fires are actively burning in the Tanana Zone today, with a total of 30 fires reported this year.

Greenland

In addition to the fires in Alaska, on July 10 a satellite detected heat signatures in Greenland that were consistent with those seen at wildland fires. And another satellite photographed what appears to be smoke.

Wildfires in Greenland are rare but not unheard of. There were also fires there in 2015 and 2017.

Updated information about the wildfires in Greenland

The August 8, 2017 Deimos 2 image above shows one of the two wildfires currently burning in Greenland. When we wrote about the fires on August 7 it was the first time we had covered a fire on the island since we started Wildfire Today in 2008.

After our article was published other organizations also wrote about the fires. Online discussions developed over the last two days have included questions about the fire history of Greenland, and it turns out that no comprehensive reliable data has been unearthed. Researchers looking through satellite data have found historical heat detections by MODIS but many of the individual sensor trips are of low confidence, meaning they could be something other than a wildfire.

It appears that fires have occurred in Greenland, but at very low levels, and sporadically. We are not aware of the reliability of “wildfire CO2 emissions” to indicate the occurrence of wildfires, but the data presented by Mark Parrington (below) looks interesting.

Click once or twice on the images below to see larger versions.