Global Warming Fuels U.S. Forest Fires

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Global Warming Fuels U.S. Forest Fires

A recent increase in wildfire activity has been correlated with rising seasonal temperatures and the earlier arrival of spring, a new study concludes.

Looking at a database of 1,166 forest wildfires from 1970 to 2003 in the western United States, researchers compared the number and potency of wildfires to spring and summer temperatures and the timing of snowmelts.

Wildfire season and potency increased "suddenly and dramatically" in the late 1980's, the scientists say.

"The increase in large wildfires appears to be another part of a chain of reactions to climate warming," said study co-author Dan Cayan, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Climate Research Division. "The recent ramp-up is likely, in part, caused by natural fluctuations, but evidence is mounting that anthropogenic effects have been contributing to warmer winters and springs in recent decades."

Fired up

Cayan and colleagues noted that in the mid 1980's there was a jump of four times the average number of wildfires in the West compared with the early 1980's and 1970's.  The total area burned was six-and-a-half times greater in the mid 1980's than the earlier years examined. [Graphic: National Acres Burned]

The wildfire season has also extended by 78 days in the more recent period of 1987 to 2003 compared to 1970 through 1986.

The researchers also found that 56 percent of the wildfires and 72 percent of the total burnt area occurred during the years when the snow melted early. When the snowmelt season occurred later than average, only 11 percent of wildfires occurred.

"At higher elevations what really drives the fire season is the temperature. When you have a warm spring and early summer, you get earlier snowmelt," said study coauthor Anthony Westerling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. "With the snowmelt coming out a month earlier, areas then get drier earlier overall and there is a longer season in which a fire can be started—there's more opportunity for ignition."

Changing the forest

The increased frequency of large wildfires could reduce the density of trees and change forest landscapes.

The country's western forests, which traditionally act as storage "sinks" for sequestering 20 to 40 percent of all U.S. carbon output, are now transforming into a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide as they burn up, the authors write.

"I see this as one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States," said study coauthor Thomas Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. " Lots of people think climate change and the ecological responses are 50 to 100 years away. But it's not 50 to 100 years away—it's happening now in forest ecosystems through fire."

The study is detailed in this week's online version of the journal Science.

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Sara Goudarzi
Sara Goudarzi
Sara Goudarzi is a Brooklyn writer and poet and covers all that piques her curiosity, from cosmology to climate change to the intersection of art and science. Sara holds an M.A. from New York University, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and an M.S. from Rutgers University. She teaches writing at NYU and is at work on a first novel in which literature is garnished with science.