Fires so intense that they consume millions of acres of trees and scorch the soil on the forest floor have become the kind of extreme disruptors that are remaking the boreal forest and transforming its role as one of the world?s great protectors against global warming.

The boreal, which takes its name from Boreas, the Greek god of the North Wind, encircles the top of the globe in North America and Eurasia. Half lies in Siberia, another third in Canada, and the rest in Alaska and Scandinavia.

It is Earth?s single largest land habitat, and it stores about 30 percent of the carbon found on the planet?s surfaces—more than any other terrestrial ecosystem. The forest also provides refuge for animals and birds as they relocate from southern habitats that have become too warm.

Climate change is playing out twice as fast in the boreal forest than it is on the rest of the planet. Vegetation is changing as climatic zones migrate north faster than trees can adapt.

Already, dramatic change can be glimpsed from space: The tundra is turning green, while the boreal forest is turning brown.

Some scientists predict the boreal forest may reach a disastrous—and irreversible—tipping point this century and shift from carbon storehouse into a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Others contend that the tipping point has already been reached.

These forests matter to the rest of us on Earth because of how they help regulate climate by keeping carbon in the soil and in the trees and out of the atmosphere.

So where fires are getting bigger and happening more often, that impacts the rest of us. It?s putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that would have stayed locked up for perhaps hundreds of years.

The warmer the Earth gets, the more fire we get, and the more fire we get, the more greenhouse gases we get.

Read more on: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/forests-fires-global-warming-boreal-nasa-earth-science/

PHOTOGRAPH BY NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY of a Forest Fire