{"id":59177,"date":"2021-09-01T09:02:19","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T14:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59177"},"modified":"2021-09-01T09:02:19","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T14:02:19","slug":"study-bolsters-case-that-climate-change-is-driving-many-california-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59177","title":{"rendered":"Study Bolsters Case That Climate Change Is Driving Many California Wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Study Bolsters Case That Climate Change Is Driving Many California Wildfires<\/a><\/h3>\n

Link Seen to Fivefold Jump in Area Burned<\/strong><\/p>\n

Against a backdrop of long-term\u00a0rises in temperature in recent decades, California has seen ever higher spikes in seasonal wildfires, and, in the last two years, a string of disastrous, record-setting blazes. This has led scientists, politicians and media to ponder: what role might warming climate be playing here?\u00a0A new study<\/a>\u00a0combs through the many factors that can promote wildfire, and\u00a0concludes that in many, though not all,\u00a0cases, warming climate is the decisive driver. The study finds in particular that\u00a0the huge summer\u00a0forest fires that have\u00a0raked the North Coast and Sierra Nevada regions\u00a0recently have a strong connection to arid ground conditions brought on by increasing heat. It suggests that\u00a0wildfires<\/a>\u00a0could grow exponentially in the next 40 years, as temperatures continue to rise.<\/p>\n

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Area burned by California wildfires in thousands of square kilometers, 1972-2018. Specific regions studied are at upper left. (Adapted from Williams et al., 2019)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The study notes that average summer temperatures in the state have risen\u00a03.25 degrees Fahrenheit\u00a0since 1896, with\u00a0three-quarters of that increase occurring since the early 1970s. From 1972 to 2018, the area burned annually has\u00a0shot up fivefold, fueled mainly by a more than eightfold spike in summer forest fires. The researchers say the\u00a0summer forest-fire increases are driven by a simple mechanism:\u00a0when air heats up even modestly, it causes more moisture to evaporate from soils and\u00a0vegetation. The result: fires start more easily, and can spread faster and farther. During the fall, and in non-forested areas, different dynamics may be at work and the results are less clear; but the researchers project that climate-driven aridity is likely to play a growing role there as well.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Study Bolsters Case That Climate Change Is Driving Many California Wildfires Link Seen to Fivefold Jump in Area Burned Against a backdrop of long-term\u00a0rises in temperature in recent decades, California has seen ever higher spikes in seasonal wildfires, and, in the last two years, a string of disastrous, record-setting blazes. This has led scientists, politicians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,141,31685,31687,31686,4849],"class_list":["post-59177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-california","tag-climate-change","tag-columbia-climate-school","tag-columbia-university","tag-kevin-krajick","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59178,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59177\/revisions\/59178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}