Can Solar Storms Cause Wildfires?

astroengine writes "In the wake of recent solar activity, some space cadets were very quick to point out a causal link between geomagnetic storms and the wildfires currently ravaging the landscape surrounding Moscow. Of course, this is patently false. But is there a scenario when the onset of a solar storm could have secondary effects, sparking fires in already arid regions? Possibly. What's more, it already happened, 150 years ago."

Comments

lightning, arson and others are more likey

[Joe The Dragon]

lightning, arson and others are more likely

Re:lightning, arson and others are more likey

[mcvos]

An even more likely explanation for the fires to get this big, is the fact that Putin fired a lot of firefighters and forest guards a few years ago. All the fire lanes that kept the forests compartmentalized are now gone, and that allows forest fires to get this far out of control.

Re:lightning, arson and others are more likey

[gtall]

That and apparently during those early lusty Soviet times, there was a grand vision to power the USSR and Moscow in particular with peat. Peat is in bogs. To burn it you have to get the water out. So they drained the bogs. Fast forward to the latter Soviet times when natural gas was discovered (no, I'm not talking about Politburo speeches) and a half century of Communist WTF 5 year projects caught up with them. So they dropped the peat idea and started cooking with gas. That was all nice and tidy but no one wanted to go back and rewater the bogs. Now, a bit of global warming, a bit of La Nina, a bit of nasty drought...add some lightning, dumb Russians tossing their cigarette butts in the bogs, etc. and we have the spectacle of Putin pushing a button on a fire plane to drop a giant raindrop of water to show his solidarity with the proles.

The only reason the bogs didn't attempt to kill the Russians before was the amount of rainfall they normally receive which put out the bog fires they normally have. That works fine until you have a drought, and even more Russian screwups like you mentioned.

Re:Does not compute

[mangu]

It's a shame that these days "Electric Universe" has become the new "conspiracy theory", triggering an instantaneous holier-than-thou ridicule from people who are not familiar with it and have never seriously studied it.

No scientist has any obligation to study each new theory that someone publishes. If they did that they wouldn't have any time left to do science. That's why there are scientific publications that are "peer reviewed".

When someone sends a paper to one of those magazines, the editor first checks the sender's credentials, to make sure he has done the preliminary work to study enough of the matter to get a degree, then he sends a copy of the paper to someone who knows enough of the subject to form an opinion.

If you want to publish an entirely new and revolutionary theory, like that "electric universe" thing, well, the burden of the proof is with you. It's not enough that your theory explains a grass fire that happened in 1859. Your theory also has to explain everything else that "conventional" physics (i.e. what's in peer researched papers) explain.

The "electric universe" isn't viewed as a "conspiracy theory" by scientists. It's just another of those thousands of theories that fail to explain the known facts of the universe.

Re:Power lines.

[Capsaicin]

Actually, if the enviromental nazis ...

Who are these Nazis?

just let controlled burns continue

Whoever these Nazis are, they seem to have far less power than you imagine. Controlled burns are proceeding everywhere. We just had a swathe of bush backing onto our place burnt a few months ago, thank you RFS. Do you live in the city or something?

we wouldn't have the magnitude of devestation [sic.] that hits so often

Well how you explain the Victorian fires then? Taking into consideration the intensive hazard reduction campaign undertaken in the year leading up to them.

Could the frequency of extreme fire events during the last decade have had anything to do with that much of SW-Australia was in one of the -- if not the --deepest and most prolonged droughts in history? Could it have had anything to do with record breaking spells of hot weather --especially in Victoria, where Melbourne not only recorded it's single hottest temperature on record, but where the state recorded it's longest run of extreme heat? ... low humidity? ...

Oh gosh, how silly of me, it was the Nazis! Of course.