Boreal forests and their peatlands are one of the largest natural absorbers of carbon on the planet. But as climate change heats up northern latitudes, that carbon sink is increasingly at risk of going up in smoke. A study published earlier this month in the journal Science found the 2021 boreal wildfire season released a record 480 megatons of carbon — far more than the combined yearly emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector, transport and buildings. The fire season, which stretched across boreal forests in Canada, the U.S. and Russia, could be a sign of things to come, concluded the study. …“It’s not only 2021,” said Yang Chen, a wildfire researcher at University of California Irvine and another co-author on the study. “When we look at the past 20 years, we see a clearly increasing trend in emissions, and in the future, with further warming, the scenarios like 2021 will occur more frequently.”