'Zombie' fires could become more common due to climate change, new study suggests

Climate change may be making the emergence of zombie forests fires more frequent, scientists have discovered.

Climate change may be bringing forest fires back from the dead after a long winter buried underground, according to a new study. Zombie forest fires -- a fire that smolders beneath the surface during the winter and reignites when temperatures warm -- are becoming more frequent due to warming temperatures, scientists have discovered. While forest fires are typically viewed in the context of a single fire season, researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam wanted to determine how much zombie fires contribute to fire activity and whether they are connected to climate change, Rebecca Scholten, an earth system scientist at the university and co-author of the new study published Wednesday in Nature, told ABC News. The researchers looked at boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere, namely Alaska and Canada, which contain deciduous trees and conifers that "burn really well and intensely" and deep into the soil, Scholten said.