ArticleNature communications2019
Four-fold increase in solar forcing on snow in western U.S. burned forests since 1999.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 112 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impact of current and warmer climate conditions on snow cover loss in burned forests.Science advances · 2025Article
- Fire influence on land-water interactions in aridland catchments.Bioscience · 2025Article
- Delayed wildfires in 2020 promote snowpack melting in the western United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Increasing wildfire impacts on snowpack in the western U.S.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- U.S. fires became larger, more frequent, and more widespread in the 2000s.Science advances · 2022Article
- Variable wildfire impacts on the seasonal water temperatures of western US streams: A retrospective study.PloS one · 2022Article
- Warming enabled upslope advance in western US forest fires.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Forest fires are increasing across the American West due to climate warming and fire suppression. Accelerated snow melt occurs in burned forests due to increased light transmission through the canopy and decreased snow albedo from deposition of light-absorbing impurities. Using satellite observations, we document up to an annual 9% growth in western forests burned since 1984, and 5 day earlier snow disappearance persisting for >10 years following fire. Here, we show that black carbon and burned woody debris darkens the snowpack and lowers snow albedo for 15 winters following fire, using measurements of snow collected from seven forested sites that burned between 2002 and 2016. We estimate a 372 to 443% increase in solar energy absorbed by snowpacks occurred beneath charred forests over the past two decades, with enhanced post-fire radiative forcing in 2018 causing earlier melt and snow disappearance in > 11% of forests in the western seasonal snow zone.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.