In August 2019 areas of Siberia and Alaska, within the Arctic circle, were on fire. The Arctic wildfires, combined with the Amazon forest fires and elsewhere released black carbon - essentially, carbon dioxide (CO_2) further polluted with particulate matter - which has 60% more global warming potential (GWP) than normal CO_2; GWP measures how much heat a greenhouse gas (GHG) traps in the atmosphere over a specific time, typically 20,100, or 500 years. As the forest fires raged, storms ripped through the tropics; the June-November hurricane season produced six hurricanes, two of which - Dorian in August and Lorenzo in September - were category 5. Prior to the hurricanes, a severe cold wave swept through the midwestem US and eastern Canadian areas during January and February, effectively plunging temperatures to sub-zero degrees. Indeed, in the state of Minnesota, temperatures dropped as low as -49℃ and wind chill was -54℃.
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