Solar Activity – Climate Change and Natural Disasters in Mountain Regions - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 10

climate conditions and the initial phase of fire is unclear. Every attempt of more
complex research of this problem unavoidably leads to contradictory results which
have been noticed about climate changes.
In the last few decades many scientific papers were published with several
opposed attitudes towards climate changes. Girardin et al. ( 2006 ) say: “Human-
induced climate change could lead to an increase in forest fire activity in Ontario,
owing to the increased frequency and severity of drought years, increased climatic
variability and incidence of extreme climatic events, and increased spring and fall
temperatures. Climate change therefore could cause longer fire seasons, with greater
fire activity and greater incidence of extreme fire activity years.” The news are
becoming worse as they note “Fire has also been recognized as a significant source
of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Most of this is in the form of
carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), but quantities of carbon monoxide, methane, long-chain
hydrocarbons, and carbon particulate matter are also emitted.”
Contrary to the euphoria on global warming, which especially has been supported
in the media during the last years, there are more and more papers in which regional
climate changes are emphasized (Michaels, 1998 ;Gray, 2000 ; Landscheidt, 2003 ;
Komitov, 2005 ; Radovanovic et al., 2006 , and many others). In that sense, the results
that came out are commented as follows: “Just when you are starting to believe that
variations in the amount of energy, which is coming from the sun, are not responsi-
ble for much of the observed surface warming during the past 20 years, Scafetta and
Wes t ( 2006 ) conclude otherwise: 'We estimate that the sun contributed as much as
45-50% of the 1900-2000 global warming, and 25-35% of the 1980-2000 global
warming. These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forc-
ing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the
last century, also suggest that the solar impact on climate change during the same
period is significantly stronger than what some theoretical models have predicted' ”
( http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/category/climate-forcings/ ).
In situations when a number of localities appear, burning in several states, the
question of intentionally or unintentionally caused fires simply cannot be taken
into discussion. Due to the limited scope of the chapter only two figures will be
presented, illustrating the non-justification of taking into consideration the anthro-
pogenic affect on the phenomenon of the initial phase of fire in similar situations.
Speaking about Fig. 2.1 , it is necessary to emphasize that 2 days earlier many
fires appeared on the southern banks of the Baltic Sea. It has come out that at the end
of March the destructive power of fires was spreading from the north of the Central
Europe towards the south of the Balkans and even on the south of the Apennines
(Radovanovic and Gomes, 2009 ).
It is also necessary to mention that such images can be taken only when fire is
already in its developed phase. In other words, the moment of the ignition certainly
appears a little earlier. Nevertheless, satellites cannot detect fires which seize smaller
surfaces (less than 1 km 2 ). Csiszar et al. ( 2005 ) wrote about the limitations of using
satellites for the spatial detection of forest fires.
Fire seized locations throughout the Balkans can be seen from Fig. 2.2 . Forests
burned in the following mountains: Prokletije (Serbia, Albania), Sara (Macedonia),