11th August 2013 Future extreme wildfires will be fuelled by climate change Michigan State University reports that climate change is fuelling larger and more destructive wildfires in the Western United States, a trend that is set to continue.
Climate change will trigger larger and more destructive wildfires in the American West in the future, according to new research led by Michigan State University scientists. Fires showing erratic behaviours are often harder to contain and result in catastrophic damage and loss of property and life. "Our findings suggest that future lower atmospheric conditions may be conducive to larger and more extreme wildfires, posing an additional challenge to fire and forest management," said Lifeng Luo, MSU assistant professor of geography and lead author on the study, which appears in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. The researchers analysed recent climate patterns (1971 onwards) and calculated future trends (2041-2070) projected by multiple regional climate models. They then determined the effect of those patterns on an operational fire-weather scale – the Haines Index – that is used for assessing the atmospheric potential for extreme or erratic wildfires. The study focussed on the mountainous western United States including Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and focussed on the month of August, the most active month for wildfires in the region.
Last year was the warmest in the history of the continental U.S. The average temperature in the lower 48 states was 55.3°F (12.9°C), topping the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit. August 2012 saw 3.6 million acres burn across the Western U.S., the most of any August since 2000. However, there were only 6,948 fires in August 2012 – the second fewest in that 12-year timeframe – meaning the fires were much larger. Large wildfires are driven by factors including the availability of fuel (vegetation), precipitation, wind, the location of lightning strikes and anthropogenic factors. In particular, the researchers found that exceptionally dry and unstable conditions in the earth's lower atmosphere may be more frequent in the future, thus contributing to more "erratic and extreme fire behaviour." "Global climate change may have a significant impact on these factors, thus affecting potential wildfire activity in the western United States," the study says.
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