Representing Northern High Latitude Peat Fires in the JULES-INFERNO Fire Model

Anthropogenic activities and climate change are increasing the vulnerability of carbon rich peatlands to wildfires. Peat fires, which are dominated by smouldering combustion, are some of the largest and most persistent wildfires on Earth. Across the northern high latitudes, peat fires have the potential to release vast amounts of long term stored carbon and other greenhouse gases and aerosols. Consequently, peat fires can have huge implications on the carbon cycle and result in a positive feedback effect on the climate system. Peat fires also impact air quality and can lead to haze events, with major impacts on human health. Despite the importance of peat fires they are currently not represented in most fire models, leading to large underestimations of burnt area and carbon emissions in the high latitudes. Here, I present a representation of peat fires in the JULES-INFERNO fire model (INFERNO-peat). INFERNO-peat improves the representation of burnt area across the high latitudes, with notable areas of improvement in Canada and Siberia. INFERNO-peat also highlights a large amount of interannual variability in carbon emissions from peat fires. The inclusion of peat fires into JULES-INFERNO demonstrates the importance of representing peat fires in models, and not doing so may heavily restrict our ability to model present and future fires and their impacts across the northern high latitudes.