Wildfires and Climate Change

The year 2020 has been a time of destructive wildfires around the world. The same happened last year. And, over the past decades, the fires have been become more frequent around the planet, as well as more deadly. At the same time, Earth is undergoing climate change. Now, correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation in science. However, in this case, there’s a direct link between climate change and the rise of destructive fires.

Average global temperatures are rising, which means that spring and summer temperatures are higher. For regions where snowpack supplies water, this means that melt happens earlier. Soils dry out sooner, and inevitably, we get drought. This is certainly true where I live, in the Western United States. But, it has also happened in Australia, Europe, and parts of South America, and Asia. It’s part of climate change.

I’ve talked about climate change here before. Why? Because it’s part of studying our planet as a planet. We study Mars and Venus and the others and characterize their surfaces and atmospheres. Our space and weather agencies do the same for Earth. Unfortunately for us, the data about our planet also contains damning evidence that we’re hurting the planet we live on. There is no Planet B.

How Are Wildfires and Climate Change Connected?

When regions dry out, trees and shrubs are stressed early. This makes them susceptible to insect infestations (particularly pine beetles in parts of the U.S.) and disease. Those, in turn, weaken the plants and trees. They become tinder, waiting for the next lightning strike, a careless smoker or a hiker building a fire in a fragile area, a downed power line in a windstorm; basically anything that can spark a fire. Once the flames start, they are fed by the tinderbox conditions. If the winds are blowing, that hurries the fire across huge sections of landscape in very short order.

The onset of climate change has made it easier for more and larger wildfires to occur. In Australia, huge fires devastated large swaths of the continent, and it’s likely they’ll happen again. Here in the Western U.S., where we face exceptionally dry conditions through much of the year, the likelihood of fires increases each year. Forests are destroyed, homes lost, wildlife affected, and the costs of fighting the fires go up. The science is pretty clear about climate change. We can chart its effects and costs.

We know what has caused our climate to change: increasing greenhouse gases in our atmosphere that trap heat. Where do the gases come from? We all know this, too: human activities using fossil fuels for transport, electrical generation, and other activities, are a large part of the problem. I know that doesn’t sit well with a lot of folks who depend on fossil fuels for transportation, heating, cooking, and as a way to make money. I’m one of them. But, it doesn’t change the basic science. You pump enough greenhouse gases into an atmosphere, and that is going to affect the long-term climate. We’ve been doing that for more than a century, and the changes are documentable and measurable. And, now we are facing increasing wildfire dangers.

Climate Change, Fires, and Your Health

These fires put out a lot of smoke, in addition to the destruction they cause. Those of us who experience the secondhand effects of fires can tell you that breathing in smoke for weeks at a time is not a good thing. The smoke from the fires contains a number of pollutants, particulates, and ash. Some of that stuff comes from the vegetation that is burned. But, anyone who’s watched a fire burn through buildings knows that puts other materials into the smoke as well.

I remember watching several homes go up in a fire north of us some years ago; smoke from trees is generally white in color. When a home goes up, the smoke turns dark and heavy. It’s an incredibly sad sight because you know that someone’s home and treasures are going, going, gone. In fact, I have a colleague who lost everything to a fire in Oregon; he and his wife barely had minutes to get out of their home before it went up in flames. The same happened with the fires near my home this past weekend. Families are homeless, businesses ruined, landscapes torched.

During the recent fires, many of us in the affected regions have seen ashfall from fires. It’s not the best thing to be breathing into our lungs, just as pollution in cities isn’t good for the people who live in them. Beyond the obvious smoke pollution, however, is the carbon dioxide that fires pump into an already-stressed atmosphere. In addition, after a fire chews its way through a landscape, that burned area is going to be much more susceptible to flooding and mudslides when it does rain or snow. So, wildfires pose a risk to life and landscapes in several ways. And, as climate change intensifies, we’ll see more of this kind of activity. It’s not going to be a fun ride.

Climate Science is Fact-based

Everything I’ve written here is fact-based, science-based knowledge. If you live in a fire-prone area, you are already familiar with this. Of course, if you live in a city overridden with pollutants, you also know about the effects of breathing effluent. If you don’t, please take the word of climate scientists who measure the changes and do the science. Also, believe your fellow humans who have to live with this. It’s time to make some fundamental changes in the way we treat our planet. We’ve known this for years. But now, we have to OWN that knowledge and make some changes that benefit all life on this planet.

It’s interesting to think about this: if we saw this happening on another planet, or if we saw the people in a neighboring townn doing something that endangered our own lives and livelihoods, we’d speak up. We’d document it, wouldn’t we? Well, it’s a little tougher to do since we’re ON the planet that we’re changing. It’s too easy to just not do anything. And, during a time of pandemic (and spread of disease is another side-effect of climate change), it’s really tough to get out there and make changes. It’s easier (and safer, right now) to stay home. And, guess what? When populations DID stay home, their air quality got better. Their environment changed. So, it’s possible to make changes by switching up how we generate power, how we transport ourselves, and how we do things to avoid pumping “stuff” into the atmosphere.

Part of that includes rethinking our forest management practices to reduce the possibility of future wildfires. The U.S. government is responsible for most forested land in the country. For many years, the idea has been to avoid cutting trees in our forests, for example. It’s actually just fine to thin out the dead and dying trees and underbrush. That’s certainly the advice most of us who live near forests follow for our own properties. It’s called “mitigation”. It won’t stop fires from happening, but it may reduce the severity of those that do occur.

More Info on Climate Change and Fires

This is a planet we live on. It’s like Mars or Venus, in that it has certain characteristics we want to study. Unlike those two, however, our planet is alive and beautiful and still supports a huge variety of life. Climate change is our planet’s response to what we, as humans, have done to it through our activities. People may not like to hear that, but it’s true.

Don’t take just MY word for it. There are some excellent sources of info out there from scientists who DO know what they’re talking about. Here’s a selected list of reputable sources.

European Space Agency Climate Office The European Space Agency studies Earth from space to understand our planet.

Climate Reality Project An action group dedicated to public education about climate change.

NASA studies our planet from space to understand its systems.

NOAA’s climate pages NOAA has tracked the effects of climate change for decades.

UN Climate change page

Yale Climate Connections A non-partisan information service providing information about climate change.

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