Wildfires and other fire incidents

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caltrek
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Wildfires in 2021 Emitted a Record-breaking Amount of Carbon Dioxide
March 2, 2023

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Irvine, Calif., March 2, 2023 — Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires, which have been gradually increasing since 2000, spiked drastically to a record high in 2021, according to an international team of researchers led by Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine.

Nearly half a gigaton of carbon (or 1.76 billion tons of CO2) was released from burning boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in 2021, 150 percent higher than annual mean CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2020, the scientists reported in a paper in Science.

“According to our measurements, boreal fires in 2021 shattered previous records,” said senior co-author Steven Davis, UCI professor of Earth system science. “These fires are two decades of rapid warming and extreme drought in Northern Canada and Siberia coming to roost, and unfortunately even this new record may not stand for long.”

The researchers said that the worsening fires are part of a climate-fire feedback in which carbon dioxide emissions warm the planet, creating conditions that lead to more fires and more emissions.

“The escalation of wildfires in the boreal region is anticipated to accelerate the release of the large carbon storage in the permafrost soil layer, as well as contribute to the northward expansion of shrubs,” said co-author Yang Chen, a UCI research scientist in Earth system science. “These factors could potentially lead to further warming and create a more favorable climate for the occurrence of wildfires."
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/981531
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As wet as it has been over the western United states this year I suspect that this fire season might be less active for once. Fingers crossed!
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Smoke from Australian bushfires depleted ozone layer by up to 5% in 2020, study finds

Wed 8 Mar 2023 16.00 GMT

Particles in bushfire smoke can activate molecules that destroy the ozone layer, according to new research that suggests future ozone recovery may be delayed by increasingly intense and frequent fires.

A study published in the journal Nature has found that smoke from the 2019-20 Australian bushfires temporarily depleted the ozone layer by 3% to 5% in 2020.

Smoke from the fires, which circulated around the globe, was ejected into the stratosphere, the second layer in Earth’s atmosphere, by a pyrocumulonimbus cloud.

In the ozone layer – part of the stratosphere – molecules of ozone gas absorb high-energy ultraviolet rays from the sun. This lessens the amount of radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface.

The lead researcher, Prof Susan Solomon, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, said the ozone destruction by smoke particles was similar to the process of the Antarctic ozone hole forming each spring, “but at much warmer temperatures”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... tudy-finds
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caltrek
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Methane From Megafires: More Spew Than We Knew
April 17, 2023

Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Using a new detection method, UC Riverside scientists found a massive amount of methane, a super-potent greenhouse gas, coming from wildfires — a source not currently being accounted for by state air quality managers.

Methane warms the planet 86 times more powerfully than carbon dioxide over the course of 20 years, and it will be difficult for the state to reach its required cleaner air and climate goals without accounting for this source, the researchers said.

Wildfires emitting methane is not new. But the amount of methane from the top 20 fires in 2020 was more than seven times the average from wildfires in the previous 19 years, according to the new UCR study.

“Fires are getting bigger and more intense, and correspondingly, more emissions are coming from them,” said UCR environmental sciences professor and study co-author Francesca Hopkins. “The fires in 2020 emitted what would have been 14 percent of the state’s methane budget if it was being tracked.”

The state does not track natural sources of methane, like those that come from wildfires. But for 2020, wildfires would have been the third biggest source of methane in the state.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/986210
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Wildfires in Anchorage? Climate change sparks disaster fears
By MARK THIESSEN 57 minutes ago

Flames are visible from the Beluga Point parking area near Anchorage, Alaska, on July 19, 2016, as a wildfire near McHugh Creek burns. A recent series of wildfires near Anchorage and the hottest day on record have sparked fears that a warming climate could soon mean serious, untenable blazes in urban areas — just like in the rest of the drought-plagued American West. (Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Research on a flat spot for air evacuations. Talk of old-style civil defense sirens to warn of fast-moving wildfires. Hundreds of urban firefighters training in wildland firefighting techniques while snow still blankets the ground.

This is the new reality in Alaska’s largest city, where a recent series of wildfires near Anchorage and the hottest day on record have sparked fears that a warming climate could soon mean serious, untenable blazes in urban areas — just like in the rest of the drought-plagued American West.

The risk is particularly high in the city’s burgeoning Anchorage Hillside neighborhood, where multi-million dollar homes have pushed further and further up steep slopes and to the forest’s edge. Making the challenge even greater is that many of these areas on the Hillside — home to about 35,000 people — have but one road in and out, meaning that fleeing residents could clog a roadway or be cut off from reaching Anchorage at all.

The prospect of a major wildfire there keeps Anchorage Fire Chief Doug Schrage awake at night when conditions are hot and dry.

“I’ve characterized this as probably the single largest threat to the municipality of Anchorage,” he said............................................................
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/alaska-ancho ... 5a851430cd
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Controlled Burns Help Prevent Wildfires, Experts Say. But Regulations Have Made It Nearly Impossible to Do These Burns.
by Jennifer Oldham
May 12 , 2023

Introduction:
(ProPublica) Colorado’s snowcapped Rockies towered in the distance on a crisp April day as firefighter Emilio Palestro used a torch to ignite damp prairie grass within view of a nearby farmhouse and a suburban neighborhood.

Propelled by a breeze, orange flames crackled up a ditch bank, devouring a thick mat of dead grass, cornhusks and weeds. It was neither too windy, nor too humid, nor too hot — a rare goldilocks moment for firefighters to safely clear irrigation ditches of weeds, grasses and brush that can block the flow of water and spread wildfire.

“At this time of year, it’s a race against what we call green-up,” said Seth McKinney, fire management officer for the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, as eye-stinging smoke curled over newly emerging shoots of grass nourished by a wet winter. “We are threading that needle to find the right time in between a rainstorm, red flag conditions” — when winds, temperatures and dry conditions magnify wildfire risk — “and snow melt.”

McKinney is trying to prevent conflagrations like the Marshall Fire, the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history, which killed two people and incinerated 1,084 residences and seven businesses in December 2021. That fire ignited in overgrown grasslands crisscrossed by unkempt ditches, which together spread flames into urban areas with unprecedented speed, according to scientific simulations and eyewitnesses.

The controlled use of fire by expert crews is widely considered the most effective way to reduce the dangerous build-up of grasses and other vegetation that fuel larger conflagrations, experts agree.

The article goes on to discuss how regulations in Colorado have made it difficult to carry on the needed prescribed burns. Also noted is the danger from grassland fires as opposed to forest fires. The role extreme weather and climate change play in inhibiting the use of prescribed burns is reviewed.

Read more here: https://www.propublica.org/article/col ... all-fire
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A 'Canadian Armageddon' Sets Parts of Western Canada on Fire
"Fires have broken out throughout western Canada, including British Columbia, but hardest hit has been neighboring Alberta, a proud oil and gas producing province sometimes referred to as “the Texas of the North,” which has declared a state of emergency. More than 94 active wildfires were burning as of Friday afternoon."
https://news.yahoo.com/canadian-armaged ... 02102.html
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caltrek
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Federal Judge Finds Forest Service Violated Clean Water Act While Fighting Wildfires
by Alanna Maden
May 26, 2023

Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — A federal judge in Montana partially sided with environmentalists on Friday, agreeing that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Clean Water Act by discharging aerially deployed fire retardant into waterways without a permit.
The order from U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen comes seven months after nonprofit Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics challenged the service under the Clean Water Act, claiming that between 2012 and 2019, the service dumped 761,283 gallons of aerial retardant into streams while fighting wildfires.

According to the group’s 2022 complaint, the service’s deployment of fire retardants into waterways occurred on over 459 occasions without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit — a claim the service only partially denied, countering that it only recorded water contamination 213 times.

The service also denied that its contamination of streams is irreparable every time, stating that while the retardant can cause “lethal and sub-lethal effects on aquatic species,” its lethal intrusion into streams is “expected to be extremely rare and the majority of effects, if any occur, are assumed to be sub-lethal or indirect.”

With that said, a recent government study found that fire retardants — mainly consisting of inorganic fertilizers and salts — can harm more than just fish and amphibians. The retardant can also further imperil birds like the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, as well as several types of insects, plants and mammals found throughout the western United States.

But despite conflicting arguments about how or when the service violated the law, Judge Christensen maintained that neither stance changed the fact that the service discharged fire retardants into waterways without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit.

Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/federal ... wildfires/

caltrek’s comment: Obtaining a NPDES may seem like a bureaucratic technicality, but I suspect the process might result in a better cost-benefit analysis of the practice. Of course, certain property owners will probably become quite anxious concerning forcing that process as they hope for maximum protection of their property. All part of the problem of allowing construction in wildland and wildland-urban interface areas.
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