Wildfires Heat Up in the West
SOURCE: AP/Tom Pennington
This article contains an addition.
Longer and more intense fire seasons in the western United States are one of the most visible manifestations of climate change’s impact in the
Wildfires Heat Up in the West
SOURCE: AP/Tom Pennington
This article contains an addition.
Longer and more intense fire seasons in the western United States are one of the most visible manifestations of climate change’s impact in the region. And the role that global warming plays in fire regimes—and the corresponding effects that fire has on climate change by releasing the carbon dioxide stored in vegetation into the atmosphere—is getting increased research attention.
From the 1960s through the end of the 20th century, wildland fires claimed about 3.5 million acres per year in the United States, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, or NIFC, in Boise, ID. Only once in that 40-year period did forest and grass fires burn in excess of 7 million acres.
But since 2000, there has been a dramatic spike, not just in the acreage burned—more than 7 million acres every year on average—but in the size of wildland fires and their duration. In 2002 alone, Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon had huge fires that set modern records, with the Hayman, Rodeo-Chediski, and Biscuit fire