Wildfires in Western U.S. to Increase with Climate Change
Large fires in the western U.S. — such as those currently raging in Colorado and New Mexico – may be part of a shifting pattern of wildfire risk brought on by climate change, according to a study led by researchers at UC Berkeley.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Ecosphere, analyzed the results of 16 different global climate change models. The models included variables such as annual precipitation and mean temperature of the warmest month and projected an increasein the frequency of fires across the majority of North America and much of Europe within the next 30 years.
“In the long run, we found what most fear — increasing fire activity across large parts of the planet,” said study lead author Max Moritz, a fire specialist with UC Berkeley, in a press release. “But the speed and extent to which some of these changes may happen is surprising.”
Complete BS. The fires this year have not been large compared to those from a century ago. The 1910 Montana/Idaho fire was almost 100 times larger than the big fire currently burning in Colorado.
As far as frequency goes, the National Interagency Fire Center reports that fire frequency is down 70% since the 1970s.