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Climate Change Doubled the Size of Forest Fires In Western US, Says Study (time.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TIME: Man-made climate change has doubled the total area burned by forest fires in the Western U.S. in the past three decades, according to new research. Damage from forest fires has risen dramatically in recent decades, with the total acres burned in the U.S. rising from 2.9 million in 1985 to 10.1 million in 2015, according to National Interagency Fire Center data. Suppression costs paid by the federal government now top $2 billion. Now a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that a significant portion of the increase in land burned by forest fires can be attributed to man-made climate change. Other factors are also at play, including natural climate shifts and a change in how humans use land, but man-made climate change has had the biggest impact. That trend will likely continue as temperatures keep rising, researchers said. Climate change contributes to forest fires in a number of ways. Fires kill off trees and other plants that eventually dry and act as the fuel to feed massive wildfires. Global warming also increases the likelihood of the dry, warm weather in which wildfires can thrive. Average temperatures in the Western U.S. rose by 2.5 degree Fahrenheit since 1970, outpacing temperature rise elsewhere on the globe, according to the research.
The only man made problem here is the fact we've stopped forest fires in the first place. They are worse because of all the underbrush that didn't burn in the first place.
Climate change has nothing to do with it, except it got the author a new grant.
A fair amount of this can probably be traced back to this. In the days of yore, the Forest Service had a policy of "Out by 11" (the next day). The reality is that just caused massive fuel buildup in the forests, and made them far more flammable than they were in the past. That said, climate change has magnified this problem and made the tinder box even more dangerous.
Reference: I spent two summers ago at the heart of the Wolverine Fire in Chelan County, WA. We watched over 1000 acres burn in 15 minutes (from 8 miles away) and it's what I imagine what a Nuclear weapon going off would look like.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Here's the raw data, the article itself is behind a paywall. Choosing 2015 is kind of cherry-picking for the headline, since in 2014 there were only 3,5 million acres burned.
There's a fairly strong correlation between temperature and wildfires, so, this finding seems reasonable.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Firefighting also increases forest fire size. Attacking nearly every fire allows flammable materials to collect, we end up trading a series of small fires for a very large conflagration when an area eventually burns.
... as a scuba diver ... recovering and hooking up buckets helicopters dropped (if a lift doesn't feel right its a safety precaution, quick detach cable and try again) into a lake being used as a water source. Take that myth busters, scuba diver in a tree at a forest fire, plausible. :-)
There is some debate about being less aggressive and to allow a process closer to natural, but development and the protection of structures complicates things.
So man made causes, those of a climate change variety and others are both at work. It would be interesting to see how they separate the two. Plus increased human activity in an area also increases fire risks, from unsupervised campfires to bad mufflers on dirt bikes and atvs. Its not as simple as saying there was an increase from 3M to 10M acres over the last 30 years. I've witness a lot of increased development and increased human activity in southern california hills that are prone to wild fires.
I also worked a wild fire once
Average temperatures in the Western U.S. rose by 2.5 degree Fahrenheit since 1970, outpacing temperature rise elsewhere on the globe, according to the research.
Western North America was cooler than normal for the period running from about 1949 to 1972, IIRC (I used to work in a lab that studied past climates using 13C from trees and 18O from ice cores). You could just as easily flip it and say 1970 was 2 or 3 degrees cooler than 1940.
I'll put this one on the article writer rather than the scientists, but - sloppy work like this just give the denialists more ammunition to keep ignoring actual valid data. Cooking the books in an attempt to provoke a stronger reaction ends up back-firing, more often than not.
#DeleteChrome
The reality is that just caused massive fuel buildup in the forests, and made them far more flammable than they were in the past. That said, climate change has magnified this problem and made the tinder box even more dangerous.
Considering that forests here in the west thrive on natural burn policies, and the current forestry management practice is to put them out ASAP, you're right on part of that. There are parts in the pine forests in Western Canada where the debris is more then 6' deep in places. Some places are even worse after the pine beetle infestations, there are places in the US the same way. Climate change hasn't magnified this problem, but humans sure have magnified it by not letting natural burn & regrowth cycles to occur.
Hell when I was in California(Southern) in the 1980's visiting with my dad's friends, the hills in the mountains usually burned every summer or every other summer. I was out there ~4 years ago, 3' of debris and the last fire had been in 1996. They put out even the smallest brush fire in minutes. These are man-made problems.
Om, nomnomnom...
and the current forestry management practice is to put them out ASAP, you're right on part of that.
Actually, modern policies are to let it burn as much as possible, and only fight it where required. In our situation, they protected our facility (we run a retreat center in a deep valley) by doing controlled burns throughout our valley. This greatly reduced the fuel load, while protecting the larger/more established trees, and saving our site. In the end, the forest will be far more healthy because of this fire.
There were some other fires, further into the back country that summer as well, and for the most part they just kept them under observation, and allowed them to follow their natural course.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...