Solar Activity – Climate Change and Natural Disasters in Mountain Regions - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 13

spreading. It was established that: “From 1990 to 1998, over 17,000 naturally ignited
wildfires were observed in Arizona and New Mexico on US federal land during the
fire season of April through October. Lightning strikes associated with these fires
accounted for less than 0.35% of all recorded cloud-to-ground lightning strikes that
occurred during the fire season during that time” (Hall, 2007 ).

2.2 Heliocentric Hypothesis on Forest Fires

As far as it is known, Stevancevic ( 2004 , 2006 ) for the first time gives the hypoth-
esis on the possible connection between charged particles and forest fires. The
author offers in his papers the explanation of the mechanism of the Solar wind
(SW) penetration through the magnetosphere and atmosphere of the Earth, con-
cluding that protons can reach the topographic surface only in the conditions of
reduced air humidity and cloudiness. In the contact with plant mass, the condi-
tions are made for the initial phase of the fire to occur. Gomes and Radovanovic
( 2008 ) and Radovanovic and Gomes ( 2009 ) have decided to confirm the justifica-
tion of the presented hypothesis in ten, i.e. 11 cases. Besides the fact that it was
about a test research, it came out that a few days before the forest fires occurred,
the coronary holes and/or energetic regions had been in geo-effective position on
the Sun in all examined cases. Strong corpuscular energy was emitted out of them
towards the Earth, the speeds of which in some cases exceeded 800 km/s, the par-
ticle temperature was over 1,000,000 ◦ C, while the particle density ranged even
over 50 p/cm 3 . Having in mind that the number of samples is statistically insuffi-
cient (due to problems on data gathering), Todorovic et al. ( 2007 ) and Radovanovic
et al. ( 2007 ) have also confirmed the justification of such approach through some
separate examples. Regional-geographically observed, it can be said that where
there are vegetation on our planet there are fires, too. Besides the reconnection
(Radovanovic et al., 2003 ; Stevancevic et al., 2006 ), especially intriguing expla-
nation was offered on the SW penetration mechanism through the atmosphere in
tropical areas over geomagnetic anomaly, i.e. over the areas where the Earth's mag-
netic field is the weakest. At the same time, when fires occurred in the Balkans,
numerous locations were also burning in Canada (Radovanovic et al., 2009 ). The
SW stream which is directed towards the tropics due to the kinetic energy influ-
ence, in dependence on the existing situation in the atmosphere and angle under
which it comes, moves towards certain parts of our planet, also including moun-
tain regions. According to Stevancevic ( 2006 ), in each concrete situation under
the penetration deeply through the atmosphere, the SW stream disperses into sev-
eral smaller sheaves due to increase of geomagnetic induction B and decrease of
radius of the SW particle circulation in accordance with the relation: r mV / qB .

The radius of the SW motion is proportional to mass m and speed V , while it is
inversely proportional to the electric load of particles q and the value of the magnetic
induction B . Approximately, 80% of total burned biomass relates to tropical coun-
tries ( http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Fire/ ). The abundance of plant mass
certainly influenced the previously mentioned extremely high value in this region.

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