The deceleration in rising
temperatures during this 15 - year period is sometimes referred to as a «pause» or «hiatus» in global warming, and has raised questions about why the rate of surface warming on Earth has been markedly slower than in
previous decades.
Both wetland drying and the increased frequency of warm dry summers and associated thunderstorms have led to more large fires in the last ten years than in any
decade since record - keeping began in the 1940s.9 In Alaskan tundra, which was too cold and wet to support extensive fires for approximately the last 5,000 years, 105 a single large fire in 2007 released as much carbon to the atmosphere as had been absorbed by the entire circumpolar Arctic tundra
during the
previous quarter - century.106 Even if climate warming were curtailed by reducing heat - trapping gas (also known as greenhouse gas) emissions (as in the B1 scenario), the annual area burned in Alaska is projected to double by mid-century and to triple by the end of the century, 107 thus fostering increased emissions of heat - trapping gases, higher
temperatures, and increased fires.