Warmer temperatures increase the potential for wildfires, once ignited, to intensify rapidly, spreading faster and scaling higher mountain elevations that might have otherwise been too wet or cool to support fierce fires. Source: The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire But California’s wildfire record is punctuated with both “good” and “bad” fire years - a result of short-term, natural weather variability. The five largest wildfires recorded in the state have all occurred since 2018. But unusually early rains unleashed by a tropical storm in mid-September tempered the blaze and helped fire crews contain it.Ĭalifornia has seen larger, hotter and more intense wildfires in recent years, driven by extended drought and climate change. 6 northeast of Sacramento during a record-breaking late-summer heat wave. The Mosquito fire, this year’s largest, started on Sept. Instead, a combination of well-timed precipitation and favorable wind conditions seemed to play the biggest role. This year’s relatively mild wildfire season doesn’t mean that the landscape was much less vulnerable, that the forests were in better condition or that climate change had less of an effect on the intensity and behavior of wildfires than in previous years, Ms. “It’s really just that we got lucky,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension. Wildfires have burned about 362,000 acres this year, compared with 2.5 million acres last year and a historic 4.3 million acres in 2020. Yet, by the year’s end, California had managed to avoid widespread catastrophe. When a string of wildfires broke out in California this spring, experts saw it as an unsettling preview of another destructive fire season to come - the consequence of forests and grasslands parched by persistent drought and higher temperatures fueled by climate change.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |