From the AGU fall meeting in SFO. Personally, I think wildfire risk (especially in the USA) would be better predicted by observing ocean patterns (ENSO, PDO, AMO etc.) than trying to apply climate models. Further, it seems they are weighting 2012 as being too significant in the scheme of things. Also, I had to laugh at this statement:
In contrast with wildfires, agricultural and prescribed fires are less affected by climate, especially drought, during the fire season.
Gosh, “less affected” how about “not at all”? Maybe they are thinking farmer-forester mind control.
– Anthony
Climate Models Project Increase in U.S. Wildfire Risk
Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected drier conditions likely will cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades. Other findings about U.S. wildfires, including their amount of carbon emissions and how the length and strength of fire seasons are expected to change under future climate conditions, were also presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Doug Morton of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., presented the new analysis of future U.S. fire activity. The analysis was based on current fire trends and predicted greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate models project an increase in fire risk across the U.S. by 2050, based on a trend toward drier conditions that favor fire activity and an increase in the frequency of extreme events,” Morton said.
The analysis by Morton and colleagues used climate projections, prepared for the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to examine how dryness, and therefore fire activity, is expected to change.
The researchers calculated results for low and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. In both cases, results suggest more fire seasons that are longer and stronger across all regions of the U.S. in the next 30-50 years. Specifically, high fire years like 2012 would likely occur two to four times per decade by mid-century, instead of once per decade under current climate conditions.
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A Landsat 7 image of the 60,000 acres burned by the High Park wildfire just west of Fort Collins, CO as of June 18, 2012. The fire, which started on June 9 by a lightning strike, destroyed 189 homes as of June 19. In the June 18 image, clouds hover just north of the burned area, with smoke from the fire visible as blue. Credit: USGS/NASA
A visualization of cumulative fires from Jan. 1 through Oct. 31, 2012, detected by the MODIS instrument on board the Terra and Aqua satellites. Bright yellow shows areas that are more intense and have a larger area that is actively burning, flaming and/or smoldering. Credit: NASA Through August of this year, the U.S. burned area topped 2.5 million hectares (6.17 million acres), according to a fire emissions database that incorporates burned area estimates produced from observations by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites. That is short of the record 3.2 million hectares (7.90 million acres) burned in 2011, but exceeds the area burned during 12 of the 15 years since record keeping began in 1997. This and other satellite records, along with more refined climate and emissions models, are allowing scientists to tease out new information about fire trends.
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“Fire is an inherently global phenomenon, and the only practical way to track large-scale patterns and changes in fire activity is with satellites,” says Louis Giglio of the University of Maryland at College Park and Goddard.
As the U.S. land area burned by fire each year has increased significantly in the past 25 years, so too have the emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires in the western U.S. have more than doubled since the 1980s, according to Chris Williams of Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
The satellite-based view allowed Williams and his colleagues to quantify how much carbon has been released from fires in the U.S. West. The team used data on fire extent and severity derived from Landsat satellites to calculate how much biomass is burned and killed, and how quickly the associated carbon was released to the atmosphere. The team found carbon emissions from fires have grown from an average of 8 teragrams (8.8 million tons) per year from 1984 to 1995 to an average of 20 teragrams (22 million tons) per year from 1996 to 2008, increasing 2.4 times in the latter period.
“With the climate change forecast for the region, this trend likely will continue as the western U.S. gets warmer and drier on average,” Williams said. “If this comes to pass, we can anticipate increased fire severity and an even greater area burned annually, causing a further rise in the release of carbon dioxide.”
Researchers expect a drier and more wildfire-prone U.S. in future decades. Previous research confirmed the connection between the measure of an environment’s potential evaporation, or dryness, and fire activity.
From a fire and emissions management perspective, wildfires are not the entire U.S. fire story, according to research by Hsiao-Wen Lin of the University of California at Irvine. Satellite data show agricultural and prescribed fires are a significant factor and account for 70 percent of the total number of active fires in the continental U.S. Agricultural fires have increased 30 percent in the last decade.
In contrast with wildfires, agricultural and prescribed fires are less affected by climate, especially drought, during the fire season.
“That means there is greater potential to manage fire emissions, even in a future, drier climate with more wildfires. We need to use cost-benefit analysis to assess whether reductions in agricultural fire emissions — which would benefit public health — would significantly impact crop yields or other ecosystem services,” Lin said.
Related Links:
› Powerpoint slides (in PDF format) from the 2012 AGU Conference briefing
› Video of active fires across the U.S. in 2012
› Link to video in Powerpoint presentation
› Link to Flickr gallery in Powerpoint presentation
To Let Burn , No Burn is the question. Hot intense burning kills a forest. Some say of climate/weather and conifer Sierra Cascade Forest history cycles 300-400 yrs in length. Still a theory. Most very large forests do not die and give birth to new forest all at one time. In the West one original study of the mid 70’s above 7000 ft Sequoia forest, seed sprouting, concluded that cool ground fire enhanced the seed cone release and sprouting of that tree given the other provisions of nutrients. This study looking for several concerns with the primary being why the Old growth Sequoia was not re-generating proficiently.
This relatively narrow study gained popularity within the forest alarmist culture. To the point that if this Let Burn worked for the Sequoia why not apply it to the general conifer harvest zone – 3000-5000 ft in Sierra Cascade areas ? Well history does repeat itself. Is alarmist-man that repetitive orchestra leader in the case of our Forests?
Fuel and Terrain govern mans fire fighting. Fire Weather is the plug in. BTU per min. Flat ground vs topographical acute ground. One hour fuels and to a lesser degree 10hr fuels spread-carry fire. Dog Hair ladder fuels prohibit effective short term fire control. Intimate familiarity enhances many many times the potential fire control success. Boot-Pulaski on the ground dirt-modern fire fighting at difficult fuel/terrain occurrences requires mechanical support. Air Tankers – lesser utilized (cost) helicopters are the primary support mechanization in remote terrain(bulldozers have been modestly shackled). Larger the payload-wingspan higher speed Air Tankers become less and less effective as the steepness of terrain and the fuel loading goes up. Sharp drainage/divides hog back steep ridges require a cool fire for safe operations or, intense mechanical support. Even then some conditions make firefighter life threat extremely high.
The disappearance of shaded – generally in the past chainsaw bulldozer mechanical harvesting fuel breaks (not fire breaks), on key known easier to harvest ridges has eliminated the utilization of these ridges as primary Let-burn No-burn control points. Thus becoming a common Punt on first down.
The Urban Interface areas of news popularity video snap shot is intertaining journalism. Fundamental successful housing defensive operations would be increased dramatically in a pre-fire prepartion formula. What? The key to survival is distance space from released BTU and the physical construction considerations.
25 Years of increasing fire intensity/size. Obfuscating? Co-incidental maybe so maybe not, the advent of endangered specie application -like the sub specie western spotted owl- cousins all to spotted owls. Old growth habitat requirerment claim, and the demise of managed conservation forest practice. A well studied learned through applied trial and error practice research from those foresters that spent their collective learning into the dawn of well managed forests. Nearly all of the then existing practicing Professor grade university icons had almost no experience at application. The aggressive alarmist forest educators commenced the dance known as No vegetation modification- logging is good practice. California Interior valley Sonoran foothill zone via the man house habitaion of once predominate Grazing land also deteriated the practive of grazers in large numbers modifing the flora-vegetgation into a cherker board configuration. With the then west and south facing slops a visually non balanced open to the smaller closed/density of vegetation. This same checker board has disappeared from NF zone grazing.
A point of interest – some vegetation have evolved to encourage fire (flammable resin etc.), and whose life cycles are dependent on fire.
References:
http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/range/publications/documents/fire1.htm
http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/natural_resources/npc/fire_dependent_forest/ebf_fd_system.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0033589473900069
http://www.amjbot.org/content/88/11/2119.short
http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/TheBenefitsofFire.pdf
Create good/ideal conditions for large damaging fires and more will occur. There, can I have my grant payout now, please? In medium-size unmarked bills only. I’ll supply the truck.