Wildfires 2022
In the News:
As of June 2022, over 3 million acres of American soil have been burned to the ground, marking the quickest wildfire spread in over 10 years (1). Last year, over 1.8 million acres were burned in California and the pacific northwest by August, meaning we have already almost doubled the damage before the official start of summer.
While wildfires occur every year across the globe during the summer months, the severity of this year’s fires can be attributed to several factors.
The Causes:
Half of all wildfires in the Western United States can be attributed to lightning strikes, while the other half are human-induced incidents started by cigarettes, cars, power lines, camp fires, or arson (2).
Wildfires spread when there is an abundance of dry fuel, such as dead grass and pine needles, that act as kindling for fires to burn through a forest. In the Western United States and Canada, wildfires tend to occur during summer months due to higher temperatures coupled with drier conditions.
Wildfires are Worsening:
Wildfires in the Western United States are becoming larger, spreading faster, reaching higher elevations and becoming more intense, taking with them a greater number of trees and forest coverage every year (2).
This year, 95% of the Western United States is experiencing drought and above-average temperatures, with half of these areas having extreme or exceptional drought conditions (3). These dry conditions also find dry thunderstorm activity adding to the frequency and severity of wildfires.
The increasing rate in which fire outbreaks are occurring can be attributed to climate change, which results in longer fire seasons, drier conditions, and higher temperatures (2). These conditions are worsened by fire-suppression policies in the American West. In the past, lightning and intentional-burning by Native Americans thinned out forest floors and cleared out kindling that if left for too long un-managed, would be susceptible to unpredictable burning. However, for the past 100 years the Western United States have suppressed fires, resulting in denser forests with plentiful brush to be burned on the forest floors.
The increased spread of wildfires translates directly into human health concerns. Besides the threat of homes and infrastructure damage, wildfire smoke poses danger to respiratory and cardiovascular systems.
Mitigation:
Besides preparing for and mitigating climate change impacts, experts say that prescribed burns to periodically clear out forest-floor underbrush is key to reducing the severity of forest fires (2).
If you are interested in the current state of forest fires across the nation, you can track them using this fire and smoke map provided by the EPA https://fire.airnow.gov/#
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Sources:
(1) https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220620&instance_id=64545&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN®i_id=102321741&segment_id=96266&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F0f155afc-5ce9-515e-aadd-10f95b158258&user_id=2e807ea79c2f69e9be5379477fd0ac96
(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/climate/wildfires-smoke-safety-questions.html
(3) https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/02/weather/us-wildfires-2021-forecast/index.html
The U.S. Drought Monitor is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Map courtesy of NDMC.