ANS -- Connecting the Dots: How Climate Change is Fueling Western Wildfires

We were hearing about the fire in Colorado, and now  here is this article connecting the recent big fires to global climate change.  It's a fairly short article, by the National Wildlife Federation.
Find it here:  http://blog.nwf.org/2012/06/connecting-the-dots-how-climate-change-is-fueling-western-wildfires/   
--Kim
PS The chart lost it's formatting in my email -- if it doesn't make sense to you, go to the site and look at the neat little chart. 
I included comments because one of them disagrees and talks about wildfire management.

Connecting the Dots: How Climate Change is Fueling Western Wildfires

from Wildlife Promise

14 6/15/2012 // Amanda Staudt // Arizona, carbon pollution, climate change, Colorado, extreme weather, High Park Fire, New Mexico, Texas, Whitewater-Baldy Fire, wildfires



Whitewater-Baldy Fire, New Mexico on June 6, 2012. Credit: Kari Greer, USFS Gila National Forest.
Western wildfires are dominating headlines in June – but the media coverage focuses only on effects while ignoring a major cause. We hear about an increase in the number and intensity of wildfires. And separately, we hear about ongoing global warming, like how May was the 2nd-hottest on record globallybehind only May 2010. Why aren't those dots being connected?

There's compelling evidence that talking about western wildfires without mentioning climate change is like talking about lung cancer without mentioning cigarettes. I want to walk you through what's happening out west right now, what the latest science tells us about why it's happening, how it's affecting people and wildlife in the region, and what we can do about it.

The Latest Major Fires

The consequences of carbon pollution are immediately apparent to residents of Colorado this week. More than 52,000 acres of forest have burned since lightning started the High Park Fire on June 9. Smoke has been wafting over Fort Collins, as stands of pines have been going up in dramatic blazes. The fire is already the second largest in the state's history, exceeded only by the 2002 Hayman Fire. Of course, the High Park Fire is only 15% contained, so it may well take the leader spot in the days to come.

In the meantime, New Mexico is in the midst of fighting the largest wildfire in its history. The Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire has already burned nearly 300,000 acres, mostly in the Gila National Forest. This fire comes on the heels of the Las Conchas Fire last summer, which ranked as the largest New Mexico wildfire at the time. What's worse, heavy rainstorms after the fire was extinguished led to major flooding and erosion. Sediment and ash were washed downstream into the Rio Grande, affecting drinking water for Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico.

Climate change is literally fueling these and other major fires in western states. In fact, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas have all had fires since last year that ranked as one of the two largest in their histories (see table). The frequency and extent of fires in recent decades is unlikely to happen under natural conditions. With one catastrophic fire after another, it is clear that something quite different is happening to our forests.

Where

Rank

Name

Year

Area Burned (acres)

Texas

1

East Amarillo Complex

2006

907,245

2

Rock House

2011

314,444

New Mexico

1

Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire

2012

290,127 (so far)

2

Las Conchas Fire

2011

156,293

Arizona

1

Wallow Fire

2011

538,049

2

Rodeo-Chediski  Fire

2002

468,638

Colorado

1

Hayman Fire

2002

138,114

2

High Park Fire

2012

52,068 (so far)

Climate Trends and Forest Fires

Climate scientists have identified several ways that a warming planet will increase forest fire risk. Not surprisingly, all of these factors are fanning the fires we've been seeing recently in the western United States.

• Longer fire seasons: Western forests typically become combustible within a month of the snowpack melting, which is happening 1 to 4 weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago. This year, an unusually warm and dry winter resulted in one of the smallest snowpacks in Colorado history. As of June 1, the snowpack was only 2% of its normal extent.
• Drier conditions: Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and more intense droughts to the Southwest, perhaps shifting the area to a more arid climate. As of the end of May, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas all had areas in the grip of severe and extreme drought.
• More fuel for forest fires: Widespread beetle infestations have left broad swaths of dead and highly combustible trees in their wake. Higher temperatures enhance winter survival of mountain pine beetles and allow for a more rapid lifecycle. Ecologists in Colorado recently confirmed that beetle populations are able to complete two generations during longer, warmer summers, leading to a possible 60-fold increase in the number of beetles.
• Increased frequency of lightning is expected as thunderstorms become more severe. In the western United States lightning strikes could increase by 12 to 30 percent by mid-century. Both the High Park fire in Colorado and the Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire in New Mexico were ignited by lightning.

Communities, Firefighters, Taxpayers & Wildlife Bearing the Costs

Communities can be rocked by wildfires. During the last decade, property losses in the US have averaged $1 billion annually. Take the town of Bastrop, Texas, home to just over 7,000 people who braved the most catastrophic wildfire that state had ever seen last fall. More than 1,600 homes were destroyed and two people lost their lives. Insured property losses for the fire totaled $325 million, and clean up cost another $25 million. That's on top of the millions spent to put out the fire in the first place.  Dealing with these sorts of disasters also takes an emotional toll on people, as discussed in a recent NWF report on the psychological impacts of climate change.

Firefighters are having to adapt to the new wildfire realities. They are struggling to keep up with these longer fire seasons, which in some places are now effectively year round, leaving little time to regroup and prepare for the next incident. Moreover, they are finding it harder to control fires, in part because fires are less likely to quiet down at night like they used to. Nighttime conditions are hotter and drier, meaning that fires can stay active around the clock.

Taxpayers are footing the bill for fighting these fires. The cost of wildfire suppression­about $3 billion a year­has tripled in the United States since the late 1990's. The majority of these expenses are borne by the U.S. Forest Service, which now spends around half of its annual budget on fighting fires.

Wildlife is not immune to the impacts of increasing fire frequency and intensity. Many ecosystems have evolved so that episodic fires are part of their natural rhythms, but are struggling to cope with the new fire patterns. These mega-fires are trapping animals that would otherwise be able to flee, causing widespread habitat destruction, and even causing wholesale landscape conversion.

Cutting Carbon Pollution Can Reduce Future Fire Risks

To prevent wildfires from getting much worse and to limit the risks communities and wildlife, we must reduce carbon pollution. Just this week a new climate study came out making projections that many areas of the world, including the western United States, should expect even more fires if we continue spewing carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

Take Action

Fortunately, we know what steps to take to and have the tools to start taking action now. The Environmental Protection Agency is creating the first limits on carbon pollution emitted from power plants. Please take a moment right now to tell the EPA you support limits on industrial carbon pollution.

By: Amanda Staudt

Amanda Staudt's Bio // Archive of Posts
Get Amanda Staudt's Feed

• 20
• Disqus

Logout

Add New Comment

 

• Image

Showing 6 comments

•   Ken Ashe
  This makes perfect sense, but I've never thought about it before. Maybe because I live on the East Coast, it's easier for my to put the fires out of my mind, but I do see a collation between the two.
  • Like
  • Reply
  • 1 week ago
  • 1 Like
•   Kenny Tapp
  This author and entire paper connects the WRONG dots.  The intensity of wildfires today is directly related to the widespread wildfire suppression efforts that became effective after World War II by the US government.  That policy has changed in the past 20 years, the US Forest Service now only *contains* wildfires if it doesn't have an immediate threat to life and property.  Suppressing the natural wildfires for nearly 75 years caused overgrown conditions to exist at the forest floor.  Fire is a natural way to remove dead trees and limbs from the forest floor.  Today's fires in the western US are incredibly more intense because there is more fuel for the fires to burn.  All vegetation on the forest floor serves as fuel for fires.  Yes, drought and beetles (which kill trees and add to the fuel on the forest floor) contribute to the intensity of present-day wildfires.  The US Forest Service, as well as many other federal land management agencies, created the National Fire Plan almost 10 years ago to address this issue and to serve as a guide for federal, local, and private land owners to restore ecosystems to their natural fire-adaptive structure.  The fact that the author failed to mention any of this material or peer-researched knowledge is of disappointing concern about the credibility of the NWF.  If the author had taken 20 minutes on any web search engine, the results would have provided plenty of information about how the intensity of wildfires in areas where there were not overgrown conditions thanks to practices underscored by the National Forest Services, were incredibly lower and much easier to contain, thus significantly reducing the impacts of the fire to homes, communities, residents, and wildlife. 
  • Like
  • Reply
  • 1 week ago
•   D
  The media doesn't connect the dots because Corporations pay for advertisements, and Corporations, run by psychopathic CEO's, want nothing to do with the truth about climate science. Today's big time CEO's are not Eagle Scouts, and they were or are not members of the conservation society or the Explorer Posts, and depend their future on climate scientists around the world all being engaged in a giant left wing conspiracy to take their money. When you listen to how and why they deny any of this is due to mankind, it is because the solutions require them giving up their lofty posts on top of mount Dollar.
  • Like
  • Reply
  • 6 days ago
•   Joe Sixpack
  They shouldn't contain any of these fires. Just let them burn like before White men decided they could control God's plan for nature.
  • Like
  • Reply
  • 4 days ago
•   Richard Pauli
  Thanks so much for this superb report.  
  Current fire news is via  http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.u...
  • Like
  • Reply
  • 3 days ago
•   Bp
  The Missionary Ridge fire in 2002 burned 70,662 acres in LaPlata County.  
  • Like
  • Reply
  • 1 day ago
• M Subscribe by email
• S RSS

Trackback URL