Climate change is likely fueling the larger and more destructive wildfires that are scorching vast areas of the American West, according to new research led by Michigan State University scientists.
These erratic fires are harder to contain and often result in catastrophic damage and loss of property and life. Although not analyzed in the study, the recent Arizona wildfire that began with a lightning strike and killed 19 firefighters appeared to be such an unpredictable, fast-spreading blaze, according to a state report.
The MSU-led study, which appears in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, predicts the trend will continue in the western United States.
“Our findings suggest that future lower atmospheric conditions may favor larger and more extreme wildfires, posing an additional challenge to fire and forest management,” said Lifeng Luo, MSU assistant professor of geography and lead author on the study.
The researchers analyzed current and future climate patterns projected by multiple regional climate models and their effect on the spread of fire in a mountainous region that includes Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The study focused on August, the most active month for wildfires in the western United States.
August 2012 saw 3.6 million acres burn in the region, the most of any August since 2000. However, there were only 6,948 fires in August 2012 – the second fewest in that 12-year timeframe – meaning the fires were much larger.
Large wildfires are mainly driven by natural factors including the availability of fuel (vegetation), precipitation, wind and the location of lightning strikes. In particular, the researchers found that exceptionally dry and unstable conditions in the earth’s lower atmosphere will continue contributing to “erratic and extreme fire behavior.”
“Global climate change may have a significant impact on these factors, thus affecting potential wildfire activity across many parts of the world,” the study says.
Co-authors include Ying Tang and Shiyuan Zhong from MSU, and Xindu Bian and Warren Heilman from the USDA Forest Service.
– See more at: http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2013/extreme-wildfires-likely-fueled-by-climate-change/#sthash.u0hR62YK.dpuf
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I’m late thanks to having to deal with some BS this AM, but I’ll add comments that have factual information to
dispute this. – Anthony
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The stupid, it burns…
Apparently they’ve never been to the National Interagency Fire Center at http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm which shows this is the next to lowest year in total acreage year-to-date.
Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology? Can you get any more obscure? A professor of geography? Scientists?
This is the kind of wildly speculative nonsense that bubbles to the surface in the “publish or perish” world.
The biggest contributor to the size and danger of wildfires is still the build up of fuel as a result of decades of well-meaning but ill-considered fire suppression.
John @ur momisugly 8:56 am – the link is broken…?
I think the server is really slow. I finally got into it.
I don’t feel like reading the paper, yet can’t help wondering what factors supposedly caused by “climate change” could account for alleged “extreme” fires.
If you use incorrect models to determine how dry future forests will be, do you expect your results to be correct?
MSU has a department of speculative scienciness? Those are really catching on. I hope their salaries get paid in Zimbabwean dollars which equals the value of their results.
I would suggest that they have left out of their study several key elements –
1. The clearing and control of underbrush has been curtailed due to “ecological” concerns raised by “Greens” who think the pristince (pre-human) world was better managed, and this higher fire loading has not been considered,
2. Increasing exposure due to population pressures with human habitats now intruding into areas which increase the likelihood of fire damage, and
3. The curtailing of “controlled burns” to clear underbrush and create fire breaks.
All of these have contributed to a larger number of fires (thanks to careless human activity) in an environment where the fuel loading is increasing and the property exposure is higher than it has ever been. The Australian experience is a salutory one, but none of these academic studies takes any note of the “non-climate” factors involved.
These claims remind me of the “whack-a-mole” game at fairs. You whack the North Pole Lake claim down, another claim pops up. That one gets whacked down when the picture or data or something else gets shown to be false, another one pops up. It gets exhausting whacking all these moles that never cease. The mole pops up to great news coverage and fanfare (see the North Pole “Lake) and gets whacked down with no coverage.
Say again….Climate change? Global Warning? “….the most of any August since 2000” ? Check that again dear scientists. There was not any .
Let ’em burn. Fire is a friend of the forest.
I’m not convinced the build-up of fuel is well intentioned. Environmentalists profit from wild fires because they blame global warming, so advocate policies to make them worse.
Hmmm…maybe they should learn to Google. First hit on the terms “prehistoric fire”:
http://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/FireScienceResearch/FireHistory/FireHistory-Stephens07.pdf
“Approximately 1.8 million ha burned annually in California prehistorically (pre 1800). Our estimate of prehistoric annual area burned in California is 88% of the total annual wildfire area in the entire US during a decade (1994–2004) characterized as ‘‘extreme’’ regarding wildfires. The idea that US wildfire area of approximately two million ha annually is extreme is certainly a 20th or 21st century perspective.”
Jimmy Carter forestry policy has morphed into climate change impacts. Nice
Easy and cheap government solution to reduce fuels: Bring back open-access livestock grazing and this problem begins to disappear. Get loggers back in and reduce the “guvmnt” cost of logging which will also reduce the price of lumber and encourage construction. Open up the forests with roads and allow harvest of dead and downed timber for heating purposes by private businesses and for individual consumption.
Which is better? Dead firefighters or putting forest service personnel back in the forests to monitor increased public use?
“Our findings suggest that future lower atmospheric conditions may favor larger and more extreme wildfires, posing an additional challenge to fire and forest management,”
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Or may not, depending on what happens. There also maybe more floods, or maybe fewer, it depends.
American Indians managed woodland & grassland with controlled burns.
Ditto slash & burn agriculture on both continents.
Time for me to write another letter to the alma mater and more reasons to not send donations. What an embarrassment.
This year has remarkable only for it’s lack of remarkable weather events. This is so much so, that the death of those 19 firefighters was the only real tragic event the warmistas can hang their hats on. This is really embarrassing for the families of the fallen to watch these people try to exploit those deaths for their own gain.
Very embarrassing for Michigan State.
Wwhen these chuckleheads come up for academic review and promotion, ask them how they could get this so backwards, how they can determine wild fires are out of control and scorching the West when the number and area of fires is at record or near record lows.
If I was their Dean/Faculty Head, I’d fire them for such shoddy research. A 6th grade science class could do better science than this crew.
I asked on another post whether the term “climate change”
was intended to describe a cause or an effect.
So far no illumination has been forthcoming.
Actually, large fires are often driven by poor forestry practices, such as failure to thin undergrowth or remove dead trees.
As usual, ideology trumps science with this sort of “research.” More of the kind of performance we saw from Heidi Cullen at the Senate hearings.
@Fred from Canuckistan –
I’d houseclean the entire educational establishment from preschool to graduate school to get rid of these furuncles and stop them from corrupting our young people.
I think extreme wildfires are due to excess carbon dioxide causing extreme growth which leads to evermore combustible material. Oh noes!!!