how to reduce the effects of wildfires

Current articles by Yale Climate Connections, What it’s like to be caught in a deadly wildfire, May 7, 2019, Why do mudflows sometimes form after wildfires?, May 2, 2019, Controlled burns could help reduce severe wildfires, Jan. 24, 2019, The many ways climate change worsens California wildfires, Nov. 13, 2018, Climate change and wildfire Some suggestions for good reading on an issue getting more and more attention and concern … wildfires, Aug. 29, 2018, Climate change is fueling wildfires nationwide, new report warns, Nov. 27, 2018, New York Times, See how a warmer world primed California for large fires, Nov. 15, 2018, National Geographic, In 20 years, wildfires will be six times larger, March 22, 2018, Outside, Here’s what we know about wildfires and climate change, Oct. 13, 2017, Scientific American, Climate change fingerprints are all over California wildfires, July 29, 2016, Scientific American, California wildfires weren’t always this destructive, Nov. 15, 2018, High Country News, © 2020 Yale Climate Connections | Site Host/Developer WebFirst, Another tropical cyclone could make landfall along the Gulf Coast next week, Disturbance in the western Caribbean likely to become Tropical Storm Zeta, Epsilon approaches Bermuda as a category 1 hurricane, Epsilon now a category 2 hurricane; Bermuda under tropical storm warning, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, What it’s like to be caught in a deadly wildfire. In some years, scientists have traced soot from wildfires in Canada to Greenland, where they darken the ice and snow and speed up melting. They are also affecting the climate itself in important ways that will long outlast their flames. Smoke from wildfires contains volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides that form ozone and organic particulates and other toxic pollutants – all of which can be dangerous and even deadly for sensitive populations. The increase in temperatures alone evaporates the moisture in the soils. Insect outbreaks killed more than 300 million trees in Texas in 2011, and more than 129 million trees in California from 2010 to 2017, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018. In very dry years, which come periodically, these fires can get out of control; they escape, and the smoke can linger over a broad area for weeks at a time. Wildfires are also expected to increase the risk for destructive mudslides, as landscapes laid bare by fire are drenched with winter rain. As wildfires grow in frequency, intensity, and the amount of area burned, they pose serious health risks. Meanwhile, the West Coast of the U.S. is particularly susceptible to a kind of weather whiplash – wet winters fueled by atmospheric river storms originating in the Eastern Pacific, followed by parched summers that dry out spring vegetation and transform it into kindling for wildfires in the fall. California and Washington state issued health warnings in August as smoke blown from wildfires darkened the skies. Uncertainties remain. In 2015, Mickley and a team of experts estimated that the air polluted by large forest fires in Indonesia had caused more than 100,000 premature deaths in that region. Chan] School of Public Health, the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and fire experts at Columbia University. For example, a recent CIRES research project suggests that hotter, uncontrolled fires produce more harmful substances. The effects of smoke are similar for humans and animals. If you or someone you know may have inhaled smoke or dangerous debris from a fire, call 911 immediately. If that emerges as a widespread trend in the coming decades, it means less forests available to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. To limit the damage from such destructive fires, many forest managers say it’s critical to thin dying and dead timber from forests. A massive plume of smoke rises from wildfires burning in Gippsland, Australia. ', What Germany Can Teach the US About Quitting Coal. Extreme fires can release huge amounts of CO2 in a very short time. Controlled burns could help reduce severe wildfires, The many ways climate change worsens California wildfires, Climate change is fueling wildfires nationwide, new report warns, See how a warmer world primed California for large fires, In 20 years, wildfires will be six times larger, Here’s what we know about wildfires and climate change, Climate change fingerprints are all over California wildfires, California wildfires weren’t always this destructive, Direct and indirect climate controls predict heterogeneous early-mid 21st century wildfire burned area across western and boreal North America, Warming and earlier spring increase western U.S. forest wildfire activity. Warming temperatures have allowed populations of mountain pine beetles to explode at elevations and latitudes where winters were historically cold enough to limit their numbers. With wildfires burning farther north, emissions from wildfires in Greenland or Sweden could add significantly to the load of snow-darkening pollution in the Arctic because the sources are so close to the ice sheets. At first glance, it looks like the levels of pollution experienced by some Australians because of the recent fires may be on par with what we saw in some areas of Equatorial Asia in 2015. GAZETTE: How long does it take the air to clear from these kinds of events? By mid-century, the annual area burned in the Western U.S., for example, could increase two to six times what it is today, according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment. In Equatorial Asia, the smoke lasted for weeks. Although the exact quantities are difficult to calculate, scientists estimate that wildfires emitted about 8 billion tons of CO2 per year for the past 20 years. A Pulitzer Prize-winning, non-profit, non-partisan news organization dedicated to covering climate change, energy and the environment. These records provide a sense of when fires occurred because you can see layers of charcoal indicating that there was regional fire at that time. Those tiny remnants of burned plants can also affect the climate when they land on mountain glaciers and especially on the snow and ice in the Arctic. The mission is sponsored by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Science Foundation. Here's Why That’s a Health and Wildfire Risk. Why do mudflows sometimes form after wildfires? For now, the focus is on thinning forests where they border more heavily populated areas. With the explosion of wildfires in the region the past few decades, the data will help evaluate impacts to human health and the environment, including nutrient cycling, cloud formation and global warming, said University of Wyoming atmospheric scientist Shane Michael Murphy, one of the project researchers. Wildfires also impact climate change because they emit massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants that can affect regional and even global climate. The many ways climate change worsens California wildfires, Nov. 13, 2018. In federally managed forests in the western U.S. today, wildfires larger than 1,000 acres have become nearly five times more frequent and burned areas 10 times as large as in the 1970s, according to research by LeRoy Westerling at the University of California at Merced. Fire frequency, intensity, and behavior are dictated largely by type, condition, and quantity of vegetation (DiTomaso and Johnson 2006). Then, the smoke will die down pretty quickly. Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Cooperative Institute for Research In Environmental Sciences, California Ranchers and Activists Face Off Over a Federal Plan to Cull a Beloved Tule Elk Herd, U.S. GAZETTE: Do you think these fires in Australia foreshadow the kinds of fires we could see in this country in the future? When new trees grow fast, they can start stashing away significant amounts of carbon quickly. This Summer’s Heat Waves Could Be the Strongest Climate Signal Yet, In California, Climate Change Is an ‘Immediate and Escalating’ Threat, Boulder Sues Exxon Over Climate Change: Wildfires, Droughts and Water Are a Few Reasons Why, Targeted Ecosystem Restoration Can Protect Climate, Biodiversity, New Study Shows a Vicious Circle of Climate Change Building on Thickening Layers of Warm Ocean Water, The Warming Climates of the Arctic and the Tropics Squeeze the Mid-latitudes, Where Most People Live, Droughts That Start Over the Ocean? He warned that societies need to adopt strong policies to prevent huge regions of carbon-storing forests from being replaced by lower-carbon grasslands and shrubs. Small Nuclear Reactors Would Provide Carbon-Free Energy, but Would They Be Safe? For example, someone may have an asthma attack from high levels of smoke in her neighborhood, or we might see an increase in hospital admissions for lung complaints or similar conditions. Few places seem immune: Australia; Indonesia; Canada; Alaska; the American northwest, southwest and southeast; Chile; and Western Europe have all seen massive and destructive wildfires in recent years. Credit: NASA. MICKLEY: A few years ago we did a big project involving researchers from SEAS [the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences], the [Harvard T.H. California fire experts estimate that the blazes that devastated Northern California's wine country in October 2017 emitted as much CO2 in one week as all of California's cars and trucks do over the course of a year. GAZETTE: Can you talk about the findings from your earlier work around fires and health outcomes and if they might apply here? “The air quality across a large area of Australia has been very poor over a sustained amount of time, and the net health effects could last for several months to a year,” said Mickley, who spoke with the Gazette about her research. But it's still important to include them in the calculations for reaching the greenhouse gas reduction targets in the Paris climate agreement. Once the spark is lit, humans can't do much to change wildfires' greenhouse gas emissions. MICKLEY: That’s a good question. Wildfire smoke contains particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and various volatile organic compounds (which are ozone precursors) and can significantly reduce air quality, both locally and in areas downwind of fires. Investing in adaptation measures, such as limiting development and implementing fire-resilient measures for existing communities in fire-prone areas, can help reduce the danger of wildfires. Dry, wooded regions where people and wild lands exist in close proximity have grown especially dangerous, as rural communities become trapped by rapidly spreading conflagrations. Furthermore, while scientists have studied the impact on climate warming on bark beetles, little is known about the impact on other insects or on forest pathogens. During less extreme fire events, actions by homeowners can reduce the risk that their houses will burn down. In that part of the world, many fires are deliberately set to clear the tropical forests in order to plant oil palm or other trees that are valuable in the marketplace. And 2015 was particularly bad, with very heavy smoke comparable, I would say, to what at least some areas of southern Australia are experiencing now. A. Wildfire pollution was a significant factor in the record surface melting of the Greenland ice sheet in 2012, said climate scientist Jason Box.

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